Niseko Development Review July 16 2009, 3:23pm via thevaleniseko.com

The Hirafu village is the heart of the Niseko resort. If you have visited Niseko the chances are you stayed somewhere in one of the two pictures below. Built on the base of the ski slopes it is divided into an upper, middle and lower section.

The below picture shows developments which have been built in the upper village (ski slopes to left and top of picture). The colour signifies the year construction began on each site (Blue 2005, Red 2006, Yellow 2007, Orange 2008).

As you can see from the picture below, the middle and lower village have become quite densely developed in a short space of time.  The orange indicates those properties which began construction as of June 10, ’08 and the green as of October 31, ’08.