Hello and good morning from Madarao on this first Saturday of February.

And the weekend is off to a fine start - not new snow, but sunshine and blue skies. A lovely morning and it is going to be a little milder today.

There will be a special "Setsubun" event held at the resort today. It's a cultural thing, and may well involve throwing beans at a demon. Yikes! This is what Wikipedia says:

"Setsubun (節分) is the day before the beginning of spring in Japan. The name literally means "seasonal division", but usually the term refers to the spring Setsubun, properly called Risshun (立春) celebrated yearly on February 3 as part of the Spring Festival (春祭 haru matsuri). In its association with the Lunar New Year, spring Setsubun can be and was previously thought of as a sort of New Year's Eve, and so was accompanied by a special ritual to cleanse away all the evil of the former year and drive away disease-bringing evil spirits for the year to come. This special ritual is called mamemaki (豆撒き, literally "bean scattering"). Setsubun has its origins in tsuina (追儺), a Chinese custom introduced to Japan in the eighth century."

If you find that intriguing, you can go check it out at 1pm by the Restaurant Shirakaba.

Not sure I like the mention of "spring" at this stage of the season, but we'll ignore that for now!

Night operations tonight too, so it's full on today.

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Official snow depth:
230cm

Operating lifts:

Number 1 lift
Number 2 quad lift
Number 3A lift
Super quad lift
Number 11 lift
Number 12 lift
Number 13 lift
Number 15 lift

Powder Wave I
Powder Wave II
River Line
Free Ride Park
Powder Theater
Adventure Aisle
Crystal Bowl
Ninja
Sawa
Rabbit
Kamoshika
Bear

Kids Park

Planned nighta operations this season:

Every Saturday until 24th March 2018
11th February 2018