20 Nov 08: Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow...

Finally after what seems like an age, I woke up this morning to see Yuzawa town centre covered in a blanket of white snow almost 30 cm deep. What seems like a constant snow fall from around 10:00pm last night until the early hours of this morning, has completely changed the face of Yuzawa. This is the Yuzawa that everybody is so familiar with. This is Snow country.

This picture was taken behind Inamoto Ryokan at 9:00am this morning. Now that the snow has finally arrived, we are looking forward to the opening of Kagura and Naeba resorts on the 22^nd of November even more!

4 Nov 08: Get Ready For The New Season!

The official opening dates for Kagura and Naeba have been announced and we are all counting the days to November 22nd. The WLS team will all be there to check out the resorts on opening day and provide you with feedback. This is the moment that we have been waiting for and we hope that you are all as excited as we are.

This picture of the main slope at Kagura was taken on October 30th and as you can see it is already shaping up to be a great season. Get ready everyone because Snow Country is back!

New web site 'Japan Easy' has launched !

Japan Worldwide increases in size! The final touches are being added to the Japan Easy website which is set to be launched today. Japan Easy will be focusing on having a broader range of accomodation in different areas including Hakone, Mt Fuji, Karuizawa, Nikko and Kyoto.

There will also be a focus on green season activites. We hope you can check out the site and get back to us to see what you think.

A Sweet Spring Day

Spring has no doubt come to Yuzawa and with the tempertures hovering around the low to mid teens in town you can now just get away with a T-shirt, today I have done just that. The remaining resorts which are still open in the Yuzawa and Minamiunoma area are Pine Ridge Resorts Kandatsu, Kagura, Naeba, Gala, Iwappara and Maiko of these Maiko and Kandatsu are closing this weekend but Kagura, Naeba and Gala will still be open till into May. Its defientley worth a trip up for some nice spring snow.

Monkey Magic

Well spring has arrived, we had complete blue skies, no need for coats and plenty of sun screen being plastered on. The snow conditions are still pretty good even though it is so hot, we still managed to find some good off piste as well as some fast nice courses. Kagura are officially opening until the 25th of May this season so still another whopping 9 weeks left. (Tashiro area will close on the 6th of May). The big highlight was in the car park where a band of about 30 Monkeys decided to look for food, this involved a lot of new borns being dragged around the mountain by their parents.

Top Lift -Off

A nice 30cm of new snow on Monday night set Tuesday up to be another quality day on the hill. Kagura have now opened the top lift which takes you right up to the top ridge. You can tell why they do not open this during Jan/Feb as it gives instant access to more backcountry than they could patrol; didn't matter which way we chose we were hitting 3km powder runs all day. I have done backcountry all over Japan and yesterday just proved that it does not get better than Kagura. Week forecast looks like snow all day Thursday, cloudy Friday morning with more snow coming in later during the day. Saturday fine and Sunday sunny so get there early Saturday morning as there will be some fresh tracks to be had.

Big Weekend in Yuzawa

The snow festival went off without a hitch on Saturday and although it was snowing there where many people walking around town. The Giant snowman in the open lot next to the bottle bar also made an appearance after giving last year a miss snow is forecast for tonight and starting again in the late afternoon but probably only a few cm and Spring is starting show its face with a nice blue sky warm day on the slopes on Sunday hopefully with many more of those to come.