The trip to Niseko wasn’t easy. First we got stuck in the middle of nowhere with our old rental car’s engine refusing to start. When the battery problem was fixed by a “rescue” mechanic it was already quite dark and we almost hit two tanuki raccoons that jumped out of a snowdrift on the side of the road. Then we spent nearly three hours digging this house out of the snow and two more hours dealing with the dead bugs, dirty futons and the mold inside but it was definitely worth it. Japanese interior + snowy mountains outside is a majestic combination.

It’s -8 degrees C outside, an old gas heater is steadily warming up the living room and all I can think about is this quote from Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space: “… if I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace. Thought and experience are not the only things that sanction human values. The values that belong to daydreaming mark humanity in its depths.”

Here is more magic from Hokkaido: the most stylish vending machine + architecture combination I've seen in Japan. These colonial-style wooden houses are very common in Hakodate, that used to be the biggest port for foreign trade in northern Japan in the early 20th century.

This place is always included into top 3 nightviews in Japan. Guess the city!

Pristine white snow desperately crunching under my feet, no other sounds in the vicinity. -12. Barely one person per square kilometer. Taxi cars and convenience stores same age as me. In winter Hokkaido forces its visitors to rediscover almost forgotten intimacy in a constant search of shelter and warmth in small town landscapes.