fumitani

Been doing some serious driving! If you want good quality snow I would say head up north as much as possible. Appi had wonderful powder snow. Was there for three days with all three days full fresh powder snow. Total snow fall was roughly 40-50cm.

Nozawa dumped 25cm of fresh snow (in 3 hours) when I was there last year.

fumitani

Personally I would rank Suginohara, Nozawa, Tsugaike then Hakuba 47 /Goryu (because its way too crowded here).

Your location says Kobe, Japan so please do visit Tanabe Sports in Osaka for some discount coupons for ski lifts.

They can send you some coupons if you have not used dalemo (search dalemo ski)

evergrn

Never skied Tohoku except Zao a long time ago. You’re right about the powder up north. Hokkaido powder is often amazing, although not always. I have experienced pretty good powder even in Yuzawa (just north of Tokyo), actually.

Ive never skied Appi, but the place is one of the biggest in Jpn yet doesn’t get talked about much, and I’ve always been interested.

Did you stay at that large ski in/out hotel at the base? If so, was the room clean and comfortable?

Looking at the trail map, it appears almost every red/intermediate course is not red all the way but involves advanced in the beginning and novice at the end. That seems odd to me and it makes me wonder if the mountain is suitable for someone who likes to mostly hang out in a set category of terrain, but what’s it actually like? Are all those advanced portions really advanced or not really?

fumitani

I did stay at the Crowne Plaza Appi (ski in/out). IHG group just took over on Dec 15th, 2021. The hotel could use a refresh. The public areas are decent and renewed. The rooms could use a refresh as they are pretty tired. The room carpet has to be the weakest point. The are really old and dirty. Rooms are very large and comfortable(i got a family room).

The trails are a bit weird. I had to look at the trail map quite a bit. They are mixed with black/red/green runs all over the place. The slopes are very good and wide. If you head over there i'll suggest getting some fat skis for powder runs. I was using 99 and 106. If you enjoy easy slopes the long green run from the top to bottom is good. Otherwise if you like long green runs I'll suggest Myoko Suginohara more. The days I went it was pounding down in snow so people with thin skis (at the black/run runs) were struggling and getting stuck in powder. One negative I can think about APPI is that once you get off the gondola to get to the peak (top of green run) it's a bit of a hike and it gets tiring after a few.

evergrn

I did not know they were rebranding as IHG. That’s a surprise. Guess Appi is throwing its hat in the ring as well to be Jpns next big international ski destination. They’ve got the big mountain to justify it, but it does seem like the lift infrastructure is not up to par with Hokkaido resorts. Lift layout is weird, not enough high speed quads.

Thing I dont like about non-chain 3-star caliber hotels in Jpn is that it almost always feels dated. This hotel Ive been regularly staying at in Saitama has had the exact same carpet and bedding for probably the last 20yrs. It’s good that more and more Japanese hotels are rebranding to Western chains so that we can expect higher standard of bedding, housekeeping and upkeep. My guess is the Appi hotel will get a revamp soon.

JapanFlyerT

We normally drive to Hakuba and stay 5-6 nights. In the past it was Norikura/Cortina/Tsugaike, mainly because we could stay at Norikura for ¥6,000/night for the family (Emerald Green Club). Those areas sometimes have tickets for just ¥2,000/day.

More recently Goryu/47 and Tsugaike since our sons want more challenging runs.

I have a nice sled from Germany, and Tsugaike and Norikura will let me take it on designated lifts.

In summer we usually spend a week at Lake Nojiri, so we know the Myoko/Nozawa area well. Driving the extra hour to ski there in winter is something we have yet to do.

For discounts, I try to remember to get pre-season discount tickets in December via Snonavi (or Sports Depo). Your Dalemo looks similar to what they offer once preseason sales end.

Courtyard Hakuba has some good deals too.

If we are going in March it is easy to get discounted tix off Yahoo Auctions.

evergrn

I didn’t realize that they rebranded two hotel as
IHG (what is Crowne Plaza, the other is Holiday Inn), and they have an Intercontinental on the way this spring. So just like that, they’re going all IHG.

In addition, they’re planning to open an international academy this year. And they have plans to eventually build a European style community of 10,000 diverse international residents.

https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/amp/...000092275.html

I’m sure all this planning started before the pandemic.

evergrn

Wonder what's happening with all these condos (and sometimes stand-alone homes) in places like Niseko and Hakuba owned by foreigners.
I myself toured the new mansion complex at Kiroro just before the pandemic. They said every buyer up to that point had been foreign resident like from Thailand, China and I wanna say Singapore. I presume it's sort of the same clientele at new ski mansion developments everywhere else.

I'd imagine almost none of these owners have been able to use these units due to closed border, and so they must have put these units up for vacation rentals.
I wonder what the vacation rental market is like in Jpn for Japanese, particularly in ski/summer mountain resort areas. In America, there's huge demand. My friend's got multiple resort properties he never uses himself, generating huge cash flows from vacation rentals.
Somehow I've a feeling the vacation rental market for Japanese is nothing like America. If so, are all these foreign-owed units just sitting empty? And if that's the case, then all these people must be kicking themselves... or do they not care because they're loaded? But then I'm also reading that there continues to be demand amongst prospective buyers, so there's consensus that it's promising investment long-term?

5khours

From what I know it’s “they don’t care.”

BTW - I’m on the Shinkansen arriving Yuzawa in 10 minutes.

5khours

Deleted

YariGuy

I've talked to real estate agents at Niseko about this.

I think a lot of owners enter into management contracts with the developer (or their agent). They guarantee a certain return (nothing spectacular, something like 5-7%) for the right to manage the units when the owners are not there. So I think it's these companies that are suffering, along with the owners.

These condos have appreciated a lot over the next 10 years or so. I don't know what's happening now though.

JapanFlyerT

I too had a chat with the Kiroro real estate office (in summer). They said the cheapest unit rents for ¥100,000/night. Units to purchase were perhaps starting at 50,000,000?
My guess is these people have more money than they know what to do with. The location is nice, but fairly isolated so it unlikely anyone would live there for more than a month at a time.
I can't imagine it being a profitable long-term investment. Perhaps a useful tax dodge?
https://yukiroro.com/stay/

JapanFlyerT

Interesting summary of the ski scene in Japan at the moment.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/20...19-ski-season/

evergrn

Sorry, what return do you mean?
That the owners only get 5-7% of the revenue from having their units rented out when they're not there, and the developer gets to keep all the rest?
I think I'm misunderstanding this but, if not, then that's really a raw deal for the condo owners.

When I talked to them, I remember being told their cheapest unit was ~100,000,000yen.
Yeah there's nothing to do there besides skiing (not sure about summer time), but the thing I like about Kiroro is it's a quick hop to Otaru.
I don't remember all the details since it's been a good 2-3 years, but the Kiroro thing was non-starter for me because it seemed to be a place where you were expected to pay cash. The sales person was a lady from either Thai or Phillippines and, when I asked her a question along the lines of whether buyers were getting loans from their home countries' institution or from a Japanese bank somehow, she seemed puzzled by my question as if home mortgage was a foreign concept to her.
Even if I could afford it, I didn't think it could be a profitable long-term investment at that price point unless money would pour in from vacation rental revenue.

Ah damn, wish I could read this one. Only read the headline.
I'm too cheap to get past the pay wall. Does it mention any particular ski mountain that's in trouble?
Mt.Racey is a moderate-sized mountain in Hokkaido with a gondola and a ski-in/out hotel that went out of business a year ago, but some Asian white knight bought the place.

JapanFlyerT

The domestic ski boom of the 1980s, fueled by the economic bubble and bookended by the 1972 Sapporo and 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, led to a record 18 million skiers and snowboarders visiting the 700-plus ski resorts that dotted the country in 1998.When that bubble burst, so too did the business models of many of those resorts. By 2016, there were only about 6 million active skiers left in the country and the number of resorts nationwide had fallen to around 500, many of which housed outdated infrastructure and were running with huge operating costs and spiraling debt.

“In the early 2000s, we had a very serious financial situation and we needed to find a solution that would bring tourists back to Hakuba,” says Yojiro Fukushima, director of the Tourism Commission of Hakuba Village.

“We realized that the Japanese economy was showing no signs of bouncing back, so we decided to promote Hakuba abroad, particularly in Australia,” Fukushima says. More recently, these promotional efforts have also targeted tourists from Asian markets such as China, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Before the pandemic, inbound skiers were a growing market, helping to stabilize the decline in domestic interest. Between 2013 and 2018, the number of inbound skiers in Japan increased from around 300,000 to more than 880,000.

The money that these winter sports enthusiasts brought to Japan helped to bolster local economies. According to the Japan Tourism Agency, inbound tourists for winter sports spend an average of ¥225,000 during their stay in Japan, compared to an average of ¥153,000 among inbound tourists in general.

Several ski resorts have already gone into bankruptcy during the pandemic. Due to recent warm winters and the impacts of COVID-19, Mizuho Highland and Utopia Mountain Resort in Shimane Prefecture both went into administration, while the Mount Racey Ski Resort in Yubari, Hokkaido, filed for bankruptcy in January 2021.

“The Sanosaka Snow Resort, which is part of Hakuba Valley, stopped operations this winter after more than 40 years,” Fukushima says. “The resort’s business was already struggling before COVID-19, but the pandemic acted as a final trigger.”