JAPOW.TOKYO
Pixel-art scene of a Japanese ski resort. A snowboarder in a red, white and blue suit grabs a board painted with Hokusai's Great Wave, mid-air above a snowbound village. Skiers work the piste below, a chairlift climbs the ridge, and a snow-capped volcano fills the horizon.

・JAPAN SNOW GUIDE

Japan gets fourteen metres of snow a year.

Cold air off Siberia crosses the Sea of Japan, loads up on moisture, and unloads on the first mountains it meets. That happens most days from December to March. Here is where to be standing when it does.

See the six mountains Why it snows like this

・HOW THE SNOW WORKS

Siberia sends it. The sea loads it.
The mountains drop it.

It is one weather machine, running all winter, and it has three moving parts.

Cross-section: cold Siberian air crosses the warm Sea of Japan, picks up moisture, is forced upward by the mountains of Honshu and Hokkaido, and falls as snow on the windward side. SIBERIA SEA OF JAPAN THE MOUNTAINS DRY SIDE −30°C, EMPTY TSUSHIMA CURRENT IT UNLOADS HERE

  1. −30 °C


    The air arrives empty

    A cold air mass slides off the Siberian high and crosses the coast at around thirty below. Air that cold holds almost no water. On its own it would give you a clear, bitter, snowless day.

  2. 900 km


    The sea loads it up

    Then it crosses the Sea of Japan, kept unusually warm for the latitude by a branch of the Kuroshio. The gap between freezing air and open water drives evaporation hard, and the air drinks the whole way across.

  3. 1,500 m


    The mountains take it back

    Landfall, and the spine of Honshu and the Hokkaido ranges force it upward. It cools, it can no longer hold what it picked up, and it snows on the windward side. Sometimes for four days without a gap.

・SNOWFALL

Fourteen metres, to scale

Seasonal snowfall, in metres. One block is one metre of snow. Resorts elsewhere in the world are shown in outline, for the sake of argument.

  1. 14.0

    NisekoHokkaido

  2. 13.0

    Geto KogenIwate

  3. 13.0

    MyokoNiigata

  4. 11.0

    HakubaNagano

  5. 10.0

    NozawaNagano

  6. 13.3

    AltaUtah

  7. 11.4

    WhistlerCanada

  8. 7.6

    AspenColorado

  9. 5.0

    ChamonixFrance

Alta and Whistler put up comparable totals, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. What Japan does differently is frequency and dryness. Through January the snow arrives on roughly four days in five, and it lands at around seven to eight per cent water — remarkably light for snow that came off an ocean. The practical difference is that you do not chase storms here. You book the flight, and the storm is already running when you land.

Long-run seasonal averages, rounded. A given winter will do whatever it likes.

・THE MOUNTAINS

Six mountains worth the flight

Three in Hokkaido for the snow, three on Honshu for the villages. Difficulty is given the way the piste maps give it, because that is what you will be reading on the hill.

  • Hokkaido

    14m

    Niseko United

    Four linked resorts on one volcano, and the reason the rest of the world learned the word. Also the busiest: it is the one place in Japan where the lift queue speaks English.

    Summit
    1,308 m
    Vertical
    1,000 m
    Lifts
    38
    Courses
    68

    New Chitose → 2 h 30 by bus

  • Hokkaido

    12m

    Rusutsu

    Three mountains of widely spaced birch, which is the best tree skiing in the country and barely a secret any more. Closer to the airport than Niseko and quieter on a weekday.

    Summit
    994 m
    Vertical
    594 m
    Lifts
    18
    Courses
    37

    New Chitose → 1 h 45 by bus

  • Hokkaido

    9m

    Furano

    Inland, so it takes less snow than the coast and gets it colder and drier. Long fall-line pistes, immaculate grooming, and a working town at the bottom rather than a resort village.

    Summit
    1,074 m
    Vertical
    839 m
    Lifts
    10
    Courses
    28

    New Chitose → 2 h 30 by bus

  • Nagano

    11m

    Hakuba Valley

    Ten resorts on one pass and the only place in Japan with alpine-scale vertical. Happo-one held the 1998 downhill; the top of it still looks like a proper mountain range, because it is one.

    Summit
    1,831 m
    Vertical
    1,071 m
    Resorts
    10
    Courses
    200+

    Tokyo → 4 h by train and bus

  • Nagano

    10m

    Nozawa Onsen

    A hot-spring village that happens to have a mountain on top of it. Thirteen public bathhouses, run by the neighbourhoods that own them, free to walk into. Ski to the door and get in.

    Summit
    1,650 m
    Vertical
    1,085 m
    Lifts
    20
    Courses
    36

    Tokyo → 2 h 10 by train and bus

  • Niigata

    13m

    Myoko Kogen

    The deepest settled base on Honshu, spread over nine separate areas that never quite joined up. Suginohara holds the longest run in the country at 8.5 km, and hardly anyone is on it.

    Summit
    1,855 m
    Vertical
    1,124 m
    Areas
    9
    Longest run
    8.5 km

    Tokyo → 2 h 20 by train

・GETTING THERE

It is closer than you think

Nagano is a bullet train ride from central Tokyo, and the train runs on time in a blizzard. Hokkaido is a domestic flight and a bus. Nothing here needs a hire car.

From Tokyo

Haneda and Narita both connect to Tokyo Station. Allow an hour from HND, ninety minutes from NRT, and buy the shinkansen seat on the spot — they rarely sell out.

Hakuba Valley

  1. Tokyo東京
  2. Hokuriku Shinkansen1 h 20
  3. Nagano長野
  4. Alpico bus1 h 05
  5. Happo八方

Nozawa Onsen

  1. Tokyo東京
  2. Hokuriku Shinkansen1 h 45
  3. Iiyama飯山
  4. Liner bus25 min
  5. Nozawa野沢

Myoko Kogen

  1. Tokyo東京
  2. Hokuriku Shinkansen1 h 20
  3. Nagano長野
  4. Shinano Railway50 min
  5. Akakura赤倉

From Sapporo

Every Hokkaido resort runs a coach direct from the New Chitose arrivals hall. Reserve it before you fly. In January the same-day seats are gone by breakfast.

Niseko United

  1. New ChitoseCTS
  2. Resort coach2 h 30
  3. Hirafu比羅夫

Rusutsu

  1. New ChitoseCTS
  2. Resort coach1 h 45
  3. Rusutsu留寿都

Furano

  1. New ChitoseCTS
  2. Resort coach2 h 30
  3. Furano富良野

・BEFORE YOU RIDE

Six things nobody tells you
at the rental counter

  • Naitā — night skiing

    Most resorts run floodlit lifts until eight or nine. It is usually a separate ticket, around ¥2,000, and the hill is close to empty. It also tends to snow harder after dark, which nobody seems to mind.

  • Gēto — the gates

    Off-piste is reached through numbered gates that patrol opens and closes with the conditions. Use them. Ducking a rope instead is not a warning offence — it is your pass, taken for the season.

  • Sotoyu — the public baths

    Wash at the taps first, sitting down, and rinse off before you get in. The water is hotter than you expect. Tattoos are still refused at some baths, so check at the door or look for a private 貸切 room.

  • Rifutoken — lift pass

    A day costs roughly ¥6,000 to ¥8,500, which is a third of what the same day costs in Colorado. Multi-day passes are cheaper at the window than through overseas resellers.

  • Genkin — cash

    Mountain restaurants, village buses and the smaller onsen are often cash only. The 7-Eleven ATM takes foreign cards; plenty of bank machines still do not. Draw money before you leave the city.

  • Pauda — powder

    It falls all winter, but it does not last all morning. On a Niseko weekend the obvious lines are gone by half past ten. First lift is not keenness here. It is the plan.