Pistes and lifts
What you can ski here
AlpineSnowboardSki touring
Run counts and piste kilometres are indicative. Green runs only exist in France, Spain, Andorra, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Japan, the United States, Morocco, Algeria, Lesotho, South Africa, Egypt, Canada, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand; Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Germany start at blue. Indicative average snow depth near the top of the resort, in cm.
Get to know the resort
Few resorts marry village and mountain as cleanly as Nozawa Onsen. The slopes start at 565 m and climb to 1650 m, with fifty kilometres of piste fanned around the Yamabiko bowl, the long Skyline ridge run, and steeper terrain off Uenotaira. Snow is classic japow: light, frequent, often metres deep by mid-January, when the village hosts the Dosojin Fire Festival on the 15th and the town turns into a roar of flame and chanting.
What sets Nozawa apart is the village itself. Thirteen public soto-yu, free and run by neighbourhood associations, sit between wooden inns and steaming drainage channels where locals boil eggs in onsen water. The Schneider Ski School, founded on Austrian technique in the 1930s, still anchors the snow culture, and you will see kids in race bibs the moment school finishes. It suits travellers who want short transfers from Tokyo, deep snow and a real working onsen town, rather than a built-from-scratch resort.
