We were busy and did not have time to ski
NISEKO PARK HOTEL Fukui Minoru

　Let’s tell about story of people who ran hotel and lodging at the skiing area outskirts in the series. It is Fukui Minoru first to appear. As for him, it is run “NISEKO PARK HOTEL”.

　NISEKO PARK HOTEL started a business in 1977.
Father runs hotel (FUKUI hotel) in front of Kutchan Station and will
send branch to HIRAFU. “I was born and raised in Kutchan”. Therefore I
loved ski. When I entered university in Tokyo, we became crazy about
Demo Ski. We went to popular skiing area of Honshu of Shiga Kogen
(Nagano) or Hakuba-mura (Nagano) well. Those experience helped
management of hotel later.

　Hotel was only around ten in total in those days. We thought that I
could do skiing every day at time without work before the opening of
business. Because I loved ski. But it is more than skiiing when we
really begin business. While visitor stayed, we did not get discouraged
all day. We stayed at office during season. We were eager every day.
Such a thing is evaluated by visitor and thinks that we were able to
increase regular customers.

　We were blessed with passage of times. Ski tour from Honshu was
extreme popularity, and management developed from the latter half of
the 1970s. Hotel repeated the enlargement. It was just the really good
times until the beginning of the 1990s if we thought. For busy season
of the year-end and New Year holidays and consecutive holidays, hotel
became fully occupied by reservation before season start. A lot of
families from Sapporo stayed during period for winter vacation of
school. Family who was not able to reserve hotel during the period
stayed from the end of January.

　Most of the high season was no vacancies every day. Therefore I was
already dead tired when breakfast was over. We clean all the buildings
when we take a rest a little. We begin preparation for supper next.
When supper is over, you must prepare midnight snack immediately.
Therefore we were exhausted, and nothing wanted to assume that season
was over for a while.

　The 1990s began, and bubble economy was over, and great earthquake
disaster of Hanshin Awaji occurred, and stalls of Japanese economy
represented by failure of Hokkaido Takushoku Bank continued. Under the
influence of them, prosperity that began in the 1980s has been over.

　When the 2000s began, overseas visitors including Australia which
came to HIRAFU increased rapidly. The history of HIRAFU has begun to
change again. Treasure of HIRAFU is splendid snow and mountain even if
we say anything. We give wisdom and must repeat effort in future to
keep these treasure alive for a long time.