#Published

I’ve now been able to snowboarded in 51 out of the 492* ski resorts in Japan, that’s just over 10% of all resorts! Since moving to Japan in 2018, it’s been a project of mine to try experience as many different resorts as possible.

This season isn’t over yet, but up until now I visited 27 new ski resorts this season. That’s more than all the resorts I’ve been to in previous years put together. (Is that how you express that??) It is a little misleading. What constitutes as a resort seems to be quite blurry.

Let’s take Niseko as an example. Many people who had visited before would know that Niseko is actually four resorts in one, Grand Hirafu, Hanazono, Annupuri and Niseko Village. So I count those as four separate resorts. Or you could count that as a connected resort as one, which would just be “Niseko”. Or you could count the ones that might have their own tickets (eg. Grand Hirafu and Hanazono have a single ticket).

The extreme version of this is Shiga Kogen. Shiga Kogen is technically 18 different resorts. But if one applies the connected area rule, then it is technically three different resorts, Yokote-Shibutoge, Kumanoyu and the rest. Shiga Kogen is a lot more complicated in terms of how you slice it. Each of those 18 resorts are run separately, but is marketed as a single resort — even if physically you need to drive 15 mins from the west end to the east end. Ultimately, I decided to count them separately because on the ground, they are quite distinct, many of them have a pretty clear traverse which you must take in order to get from one to another. That is enough for me to call them a resort even if it has only the one lift or one run.

In the next few posts, I’ll hopefully introduce a few of them from my experience.

*Note: Previously I said there were 500, but I was counting ones that are closed this season, the real accurate number is now 492.