[GoNative]

I originally came to Japan back in '03 with my wife on a ski holiday to the Niseko ski area. This was just prior to it becoming a very popular international ski resort. Skiing is without doubt my biggest passion in life. Anyway I was blown away by the increadible amounts and quality of snow here so we came back the next winter and ended up getting jobs with one of the foreign tour operators. We still didn't have work visas sorted though and had to head back to Australia at the end of the winter. By this time I was completely in love with the place and somehow convinced my wife it would be a good idea to leave our lives in Aus and move to Japan permanently. We ended up getting sponsored visas through NOVA, they put us in a school in Gunma and we returned in June. The heat in Gunma in the summer is rather oppressive to say the least so we contacted our previous employer in Niseko advising we now had sponsored work visas and would like to head back up there. So after just 5 weeks of teaching english we headed back to Niseko and have been here ever since. We both work in property management now for 2 separate companies. There is now about 250 foreigners living in the area year round and it is a pretty vibrant and active little community.
Hokkaido is a truly beautiful place and much more sparsely populated than Honshu. We have a bit of a saying amongst those who live in Niseko, we came here for the winter and skiing but end up living here for the summer. The summer really is very nice with little of the oppressive heat and humidity that afflicts Honshu reaching this far north. The region is amazing for living a very active outdoor lifestyle and Hokkaido is an extremely cheap place to live. Most of us living here earn far less than we did in our home countries but our lives here are just so good that I certainly wouldn't even dream of getting a job in somewhere like Tokyo no matter how much money you enticed me with.
I'm a little different to many on these forums I think in that I didn't come to live in Japan because I had a long term interest in the culture or people. In fact I knew very little about either before moving here and to be honest I continue to have very little interest in the culture. I've always been much more into the natural world rather than the human one and Hokakido is one of the most naturally beautiful places on the planet. Add to that the incredible snow of winter and I'm in heaven. My wife and I are very settled having bought a house and having our first child here last year. We fully intend on spending the rest of our lives here.