The Town the Australians Changed

By MISAWA Masaki, Certified Tax Accountant (Zeirishi, Reg. No. 157367) — formerly of Japan’s tax authorities · Published July 12, 2026 · Reviewed July 17, 2026

Walk through Niseko today and English signage lines the streets; in winter, restaurants and hotels are booked out weeks in advance. Yet this town became an international resort only very recently.

The ski boom and the quiet years

Skiing in Niseko itself has a long history — the ski area at Hirafu opened in the 1960s. Through the ski boom of the 1980s it bustled with young Japanese, but with the collapse of the bubble economy around 1991 the crowds fell away, and by the late 1990s it had, like so many regional ski areas in Japan, lost the bustle of earlier years.

The Australians arrive around 2000

The turning point came around 2000. The first to notice this snow were Australian skiers. The seasons were reversed from the southern hemisphere; the time difference was minimal; and above all, dry, deep snow of a kind unavailable at home fell day after day. Word of mouth spread from a small community, and before long Australian-owned lodges and travel companies were setting up in Hirafu. In a winter town that had gone quiet, visitors from overseas became an ever more visible presence.

Condominiums change the stay

By the mid-2000s, the form of the stay itself was changing. Rather than staying in hotels, visitors bought condominiums and chalets, renting them out during the periods they did not use them — a style long familiar in Australia. Condominium-style development followed one project after another in Hirafu. The global financial crisis of 2008 briefly stalled development, but the market recovered as the buyer base broadened from Australia to Asia.

Asian capital and the luxury hotels

The 2010s were the decade in which the leading capital changed hands. Corporate groups from Malaysia, Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia entered resort management and large-scale development, and the area’s character shifted from a skiers’ hideaway to an international investment destination. The culmination came around 2020, with the arrival of luxury hotels in quick succession: Park Hyatt Niseko Hanazono opened in January 2020, and Higashiyama Niseko Village, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, in December 2020 — cementing Niseko’s standing as an international resort. It was also around this time that Niseko began appearing near the top of national land-price growth rankings.

Thirty years ago, this was a quiet farming and hot-spring town that happened to receive a great deal of snow. What changed it was not some grand government campaign, but word of mouth among foreign skiers who had fallen for the snow — and that is the intriguing part of this town’s history. With the Shinkansen and expressway extensions still to come, the town’s transformation is far from over.

Own — or thinking of owning — a place here? The tax side of buying, holding and selling is covered in our Japan Real Estate Tax Guide for Overseas Investors.