But the startlingly pricy item isn’t something that you can eat or drink.

When international travel fans hear the name Niseko, they think of some of the finest skiing and snowboarding venues that Japan has to offer. For many Japanese residents, though, the first thing that springs to mind when they think of this town in Hokkaido Prefecture is high prices.

Because of the weak yen, Japan is not only receiving more international visitors than ever before, they’re spending more as well. Factor in the fact that winter sports already tend to be a wealthy person’s hobby, and it creates a situation where there’s a lot of foreign tourist money chasing goods and services in Niseko these days. There are residual effects on prices even in the non-snowy season, during which the town is also seeing more overseas tourists than it did before as it increasingly features in travel roundups of must-visit places on a trip to Japan.

But even with that backdrop, we were still shocked at the luxury we found for sale in a Niseko 7-Ekeven.

We stopped by Niseko on a recent trip to Hokkaido (after trying Ainu cuisine elsewhere in the prefecture). While there’s obviously no skiing or snowboarding to be done at this time of year, there’s plenty of beautiful mountain and forest scenery, plus outdoor activities such as river rafting and ziplining, that can be enjoyed in the town’s “green season.”

Niseko Village, a collection of shops and restaurants, is also open during the summer, although with some tenants taking time off until the snow starts falling again.

Taking a look at the menu boards of the restaurants that were open, we spotted several examples of the infamous “Niseko kakaku,” or “Niseko prices.”

For example, Ramen Dining Gogyo is a restaurant managed by Ippudo, a ramen chain founded in Fukuoka Prefecture, that sells its specialty tonkotsu ramen for around 1,000 yen (US$6.30) a bowl. At Gogyo, though, they charge roughly double that, 1,980 yen.

Those prices still might not sound so bad if you’re converting them to a foreign currency, but for locals who get paid in yen, they’re astronomical. The modestly sized “artisan pizzas” being offered at another restaurant in the village weren’t any more wallet-friendly, starting at 3,300 yen.

▼ Another tell-tale sign of tourist-oriented menu design: the presence of pepperoni, which isn’t a particularly popular topping at Japanese pizza places.

And while it’s not located in the Niseko Village center, the Niseko Branch of 7-Eleven gave us the biggest shocks of the day.

Thankfully, there weren’t any opportunistic markups here, as Japanese convenience store chains are pretty strict on keeping prices more or less uniform across the country. Because of that, at first, as we browsed the aisles, this 7-Eleven looked, and was priced like, any other in Japan.

But then we got to the liquor section, and in addition to regular, affordable things like cans of Asahi Super Dry and Kirin Hyoketsu, we discovered far more high-end spirits than the typical 7-Eleven has on its shelves, like the whiskies shown in this photo which were priced at 8,800, 9,900, and 9,680 yen.

Still not fancy enough? No problem, because this 7-Eleven is also stocked with Suntory’s 12-year Yamazaki, for 55,000 yen a bottle.

▼ There are studio apartments in Japan that don’t charge this much for a month’s rent.

Not into brown liquors? Maybe a 5,192-yen bottle of craft gin is something you’d like to toss in your basket along with your Pocky and melon bread on your convenience store run.

Or, if you’re craving something bubbly, you could pick up a 27,500-yen bottle of champagne.

▼ The 7-Eleven logo and a five-digit number are a wild combination to see on a price sticker.

This lineup is pretty clearly aimed at deep-pocketed travelers from overseas, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re buying it. However, when we asked the clerk “Do you actually sell much of these expensive liquors?” they told us:

“Hahaha yeah, we sell a whole lot of it.”

As we’d expected, the clerk told us the primary buyers of the pricey booze are international tourists, saying that they nonchalantly pick out bottles without much more gravitas to the purchase than someone doing their regular grocery shopping.

And yet, the craziest, and most crazily priced, item we saw in this Niseko 7-Eleven wasn’t a bottle.

It was a vase.

Sitting nonchalantly in a corner of the store with local tourism pamphlets and a poster touting “Souvenir of Japan, one-of-a-kind” was a large ceramic vase, with a very large price tag.

Yep, that’s a 500,000-yen (US$3.150) souvenir for sale in a 7-Eleven.

To be fair, this might actually be a bargain price. We’re not fine art appraisers here at SoraNews24 (our expertise hews closer to things like Sanrio artifacts), and the vase looked like it’s probably an antique, so we’re not saying the 500,000-yen price is out of line, just entirely outside the sort of thing you expect to see in a convenience store, and one more example of how Niseko is sort of an economy unto itself these days.

Location information
7-Eleven (Niseko branch) / セブン-イレブン（ニセコ店）
Address: Hokkaido, Abuta-gun, Niseko-cho, Soga 44-6
北海道虻田郡ニセコ町曽我４４−６
Open 24 hours

Photos ©SoraNews24
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