Niseko: Ostriches, Whisky,
and a Cuban at the Park Hyatt

Most people know Niseko in winter. Powder snow, ski resorts, après everything. In July it's a different place — quieter, greener, and genuinely its own thing. Two nights at the Park Hyatt, one distillery, one very opinionated ostrich farm, and a cigar lounge that earns its reputation.

We left Otaru on Sunday afternoon and headed south. The drive to Niseko takes about an hour through open farmland, and there's a stop along the way that isn't optional.

Kinoko Oukoku: The Mushroom Kingdom

The stop at Kinoko Oukoku (キノコ王国) is not optional. This roadside mushroom complex — yes, there's a kingdom, and yes, the name is accurate — sells every variety of Hokkaido mushroom and cooks most of them on the spot. We ordered the maitake tempura soba and the nameko miso soup, which came loaded with fresh nameko mushrooms in a broth that tasted like it belonged to a different category than the miso soup you get everywhere else.

Maitake tempura soba

Nameko miso soup — the mushrooms are the whole point

Park Hyatt Niseko, Done Right

The Park Hyatt Niseko sits at the base of Mt. Annupuri, with the ski runs visible from the upper floors in winter and Mt. Yotei framing everything else. In summer the crowds are gone, the rates are more reasonable, and you get to appreciate the architecture without bodies everywhere. Check-in at 3PM; we had the pool area mostly to ourselves by evening.

Breakfast the next morning came with a detail worth noting: the natto was from Iwamizawa, Hokkaido — a premium single-origin variety called Sugoi Natto (すごい納豆), made from contracted soybeans grown by a specific farmer. It arrived with its own packaging card explaining the provenance. A Park Hyatt move, applied to natto.

Sugoi Natto — Hokkaido Iwamizawa soybeans, single-origin, served at Park Hyatt breakfast. The card explains the farmer.

The Ostrich Farm

Monday morning, we drove out to the Yuushima Ostrich Farm (第2有島ダチョウ牧場) — one of the stranger and more enjoyable detours Niseko offers. The farm sits in open Hokkaido countryside with Mt. Yotei visible in the distance when the clouds cooperate. You pay a small fee, get a cup of feed, and let the ostriches make their demands. They have opinions. They communicate these opinions aggressively.

At the Yuushima Ostrich Farm — the ostriches are never not watching you

They know you have the food. They've always known.

The café inside the farm serves its own ostrich-egg custard. You eat it next to a small wooden ostrich. The irony is not addressed.

Niseko Distillery

At 3PM, we had a booked tour at the Niseko Distillery (ニセコ蒸留所). The building is striking — raw concrete exterior, warm wood interior, massive copper pot stills visible the moment you walk in. The distillery uses water from Mt. Yotei's snowmelt and locally sourced botanicals for their gin program, with whisky aging beginning more recently. The tour covers both.

The copper stills dominate the room. The wood-beam ceiling is the second thing you notice.

The barrel warehouse — whisky waiting on Hokkaido time.

The tasting at the end covers their gin expressions alongside a preview of what the whisky program is becoming. Worth booking ahead — they run small groups and slots fill up, especially in summer.

Mountain Lights and the Cigar Lounge

Monday night, the Park Hyatt runs a mountain lights experience on the slopes — wire sculptures strung with warm LEDs covering the hillside. You can hike the trail up or take the gondola; we took the gondola both ways. Smart call — even in July, the temperature up top was genuinely chilly, and the low summer fog rolling in off the mountain turned the whole installation into something halfway between a light show and a dream sequence.

The mountain lights in summer fog. Better than any photo suggests.

Then the cigar lounge. Properly appointed — leather chairs, a humidor that takes itself seriously, enough acoustic separation from the rest of the hotel that you can actually hold a conversation. I cut a Trinidad Reyes. Ayumi had a cocktail. The evening slowed down in exactly the way a good evening in a good room should.

The Park Hyatt Niseko cigar lounge. The humidor is the left wall.

Trinidad Reyes. Ayumi with a martini. Not a bad Monday.

Mt. Yotei and the Drive Home

Checkout at 11AM. The drive back to Chitose passes close enough to Mt. Yotei to feel it — the dormant volcano sits alone in the landscape, farmland running right up to its base with no competing peaks crowding the skyline. Pull over if your timing is right.

Mt. Yotei on the drive back to Chitose. Pull over. It's worth the two minutes.

We made a stop at Lake Shikotsu (支笏湖) on the way — a caldera lake south of Sapporo with some of the clearest water in Japan. The sky was overcast, the water glassy and still. A loop around the shoreline, then back to Chitose for the 3:05PM Japan Airlines flight to Haneda, arriving 4:40PM.

Shikotsu-ko on the drive back. Overcast, quiet, worth the stop.

Hokkaido in summer gets overlooked. It shouldn't.