Best ski resorts in Japan

Niseko is the name every powder hunter whispers. Storms roll in off the Sea of Japan and drop fifteen metres of dry, weightless japow on Mount Annupuri each winter, while Mt Yotei rises across the valley like a private Fuji. Four interlinked bases, neon-lit izakaya, steaming onsen at night: this is Hokkaido in maximum mode.

Twenty minutes over the ridge from Niseko, Rusutsu is the quieter sibling that locals send powder addicts to when the main resort gets crowded. Three small mountains, sparse Hokkaido birch forests, and that same Siberian airstream dump bottomless japow between widely-spaced trees, all under the silent gaze of Mt Yotei.

Tucked inside a sheltered valley on the Shakotan peninsula, Kiroro catches the full force of the Sea of Japan storms and turns them into twenty-one metres of fall-line japow per season, the highest official total in the country. North-facing slopes, light winds, no town to speak of: just two hotels, two mountains and an obsessive snowfall record.

Myoko Akakura sits under the snowiest skies on Honshu, where thirteen metres of powder fall in a normal winter, traditional onsen inns line the lanes, and one of the longest pistes in Japan, Suginohara's 8.5 km cruiser, unrolls beneath you.

Furano sits dead-centre on Hokkaido, far enough inland to escape the coastal moisture and produce what locals quietly insist is the driest snow in Japan. Lavender fields in July, japow up to the knees in February, a working agricultural town that doubles as a ski resort: this is the Hokkaido that never made the powder magazine covers, and is all the better for it.

Shiga Kogen is a high-altitude constellation: nineteen resorts stitched into one pass, eighty kilometres of piste wandering between birch forests, ridges and steaming onsen valleys. Base at 1340 m means cold, dry snow well into spring, and a quiet, sprawling feel far from the Niseko crowd.

Nozawa Onsen is the Japanese ski village in its purest form: thirteen free public soto-yu steaming in narrow lanes, the smell of cedar smoke and miso, a single mountain rising straight out of the town, and powder days that still feel like a local secret.

Tomamu is a world of its own: two glass towers rising from the snowfields of central Hokkaido, framed by Hoshino Resort's quiet luxury. The skiing is gentle and forgiving, the snow is among the most reliable in Japan, and the resort lights up at night with the Ice Village, a winter art installation built entirely from frozen sea water.

Zao Onsen is the home of the juhyo, the frozen Maries fir trees that swell into ghostly snow monsters above the ropeway. Below, a 1900-year-old sulphur spring town hums quietly under the lanterns, a Tohoku original far from the Honshu mainstream.

Happo-One is the headline mountain of the Hakuba Valley, the steepest and the most storied. It hosted the 1998 Nagano Olympics downhill, and the famous Olympic and Riesen Slalom courses still command respect today. Above the trees, the Northern Alps rise in a serrated wall, and on a clear morning the view alone is worth the lift ticket.

Appi Kogen is Tohoku's giant: the largest single ski resort in northeastern Japan, famous for immaculate, kilometres-long groomed runs carving down through white birch forests, and for the dry, abundant powder that buries them overnight. Quieter and more spacious than Niseko, with big slope-side hotels including a new ANA InterContinental, it is the connoisseur's Japanese groomer paradise.

Sapporo Teine is the rare ski resort that sits inside a major city. From the upper Highland Zone, Ishikari Bay glitters on one side, the lights of Sapporo on the other. The runs date back to the 1972 Winter Olympics, and the cold Hokkaido air still delivers the dry, weightless japow that made this island famous.