Jozankei Resort

I must admit, it was harder to blend in at Jozankei, cause it was mainly a local resort catering to locals. So English wasn't spoken so much here. After checking in, we went to our room and the usual snacks were there awaiting us. The room wasn't fancy, more like a business hotel style. They did have onsen but it was the indoor type, and the female one was full of kids running around. They have a balcony onsen as well, but it kinda looked out into the mountains and the town. Lol. So you have to be really comfortable naked to use it. Sure there are filters and you can't easily be seen. Plus, they have a sign that forbid tattoo individual from entering the onsen. So I guess this is a family resort for the locals. 

This is the view from our hotel. I wanted to go out for a walk, but there wasn't really much to see around the town when it was snowing so heavily. So I went to the onsen, and then to dinner. The dinner was great, but surprisingly I don't have any photo off it. Actually the main floor of the hotel lobby, lounge and dining area was modern and sleek. Just the room and onsen was a bit dated. 

You can tell that it is dated cause they have western cow boy doors leading into their vending machine room which is available at almost every floor I think. 

Above  breakfast I think. They have a huge buffet spread for dinner. 

As usual, a typical size resort would have their own shopping area, and this one has a bakery as well. The mascot here was apparently a frog and it was featured in many of the souvenir items. But I took the above photo cause that is one cool monster selling what I assume was a kinda of soft drink. It is so ultraman era! I actually got my Ms Hokkaido Lavender Hello Kitty Office Lady from the shop here. I love it very much so Jozankei is where she was from! It cost around 700 or 800 yen. 

I mentioned that the main ground floor area was beautiful. So above are some indoor tables and chair guest can relax in without getting cold, yet they can still looked out into the snow and trees outside. It looked so cosy! There is actually a hot footbath outside as well, but it was just too cold to even venture out. 

They have a cosy coal fireplace in the middle of the lounge area, and it looked so modern. You can just make yourself comfortable anyway, order some coffee, beer or hot chocolate and chat with friends. Very nice ambiance. I follow their Facebook page after I came back, and found out that there are actually a lot of hiking trails behind the resort, and lots of things to do too! Just not in the winter!

We only stayed one night at Jozankei, but I don't mind coming back on a warmer weather. Above is what it looked like when we checked out and on our way back to Sapporo the next day. That is how bad the snow is. 

The town was covered in snow!

Leaving you here with a warmer photograph. It was approach new year 2017 now, as we made our way back to Sapporo. My next targeted bucket list item was to see the first sunrise of 2017 at the JR Tower! Will blog more about Sapporo as we slowly wrapped up our Hokkaido holiday. I'm so happy that I managed to finally published all these. It was hard to start, but once the momentum started, it was a lot easier. Trying to recall when or what happened was also a bit taxing. Luckily the photos helped a lot in bring back the wonderful memories. I have so many more trips I need to blog about. Stay tune!