Best powder 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.

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.

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.

Hakuba Goryu and its connected neighbour Hakuba 47 form the playground end of the valley. The park is the best in Hakuba, the snowfall is famously dependable, and the layout, split between Toomi, Iimori, and Alps Daira, gives families an easy mellow base and freestylers a serious set of features. Goryu is where Hakuba feels lighter, younger, more about play.