Ninety minutes from Otaru, in a valley surrounded by volcanoes, a small ski town became an international case study in what happens when the rest of the world discovers a place before the prices catch up. Niseko’s story is worth understanding if you’re thinking about buying property in Otaru. Not because Otaru is the next …
Read more “The Niseko Effect: What Happened Next Door and What It Means for Otaru”
People ask me what it costs to live in Otaru. I tell them the number and they think I’m lying. I’m not lying. The math is just different here. It’s different in a way that makes you realize how much of what you’ve been paying in rent or mortgage or “cost of living” back home …
Read more “Cost of Living in Otaru vs. Anywhere You’ve Ever Lived”
If you’re standing on Changspa Road deciding where to spend your week, that you’re choosing between two different things wearing the same clothes.
Hokkaido gets the lightest, driest powder snow on earth. This is not local boosterism. It’s meteorology. Cold Siberian air masses cross the Sea of Japan in winter, picking up moisture from the relatively warm sea surface. When that moisture-laden air hits Hokkaido’s mountain ranges, it dumps. Ten to fifteen meters of accumulated snowfall per season, …
To understand why a real pashmina shawl costs what it costs, and why the fake version is such an easy sell to someone who’s never touched the genuine article, you have to start with the goat.
Three Houses, Three Courtyards, Three Educations I have spent enough nights inside at least two of these to have opinions that don’t come from a guidebook, and the third I have started to get a feel for even with just learning about them. The riad education started in Morocco, years before Vagobond had much of …