SnowJapan#Andrew

In town yes lots of them, though I don't think up in places like Naeba. I was actually in Naeba today - unfortunately not to ski! - and there's definitely less up there than there is in Yuzawa town, and there's less in Yuzawa than there is in Shiozawa/Minamiouonuma. Still tons everywhere of course.

Just moved this lot from my wifes car. There was no snow on the car late last night so this lot is from early this morning until 7pm, must have been 60cm on the top, and it's still coming down with another 30cm or so due overnight. Happy to report that even after nearly 20 years of winters here, it's still exciting to get dumped on so impressively.

Nice report TB, must get up there soon. I remember when I first came to Yuzawa 18 year or so ago waiting more than 15 minutes for the quad at Kagura on weekdays and much more of course on a weekend.

Sunny this morning in Yuzawa. This is 3 hours worth of snow. The car behind is 4 hours worth

Originally Posted By: Black Mountain I really want to go there now Would you mind tell me which resort it was? You could even PM me the name and I'll promise to keep it a secret! As much as in one way I'd like to say, and tell some other stories, I think it's probably best that I don't in such a public place. You might just need to come to Yuzawa/Minamiuonuma and use beer to try and get it out of me perhaps.

Originally Posted By: Mamabear Originally Posted By: Go Native It's why the foreign market is so good for Niseko and I'd suspect for the Hakuba area. Because they are coming from further away they stay longer and at least up here there is very little lull in numbers mid week. Of course it is still busier on weekends with the domestic market. I know it's great to get to a mountain and have virtually no one there with fresh tracks all day long but really how long can resorts last like that? Lifts are not cheap to run, especially the mostly old ones you find in Japan. Agree. And with so m

Good timing Dom. Lots of new snow again last night, I drove past the telephone box and it was looking good - too much traffic and congestion couldn't take a photo, but I would say up to about where we were mid-January last year.

That goes without saying!

Yes it has been snowing today - pretty wet snow, not much sticking really. I'm daring it to start sticking!

OK I'll answer this one. No, no-one pays us anything to do these reports. These are in no way driven by resorts - or anyone else - wanting us to do them. We are always keen to consider doing a new report section like we have here, but it takes a lot of time, effort and commitment - as well as a fair bit of work getting it all set up and sorted out. We need to be pretty sure that all those things are in place before I'll get my programmer to get a new one set up. The idea is simply to provide as many independent and honest reports as possible, quaint as that old-fashioned style

Sorry I missed this.... actually Gala have changed the lift in the South Area. The old one was a quad, the new one is a pair lift. 'A fast one', I was told today. Hope so!

There was some sort of power outage along the chain (out of our control) and the site was unavailable for around 1 hour around midnight.

I'm convinced that I skied at Kagura once late October, back in the early 90's. My wife insists I'm wrong, I must ask them one day. It would be good to see the opening dates, and when they can fully open, over the last 20-30 years.

Yes just seen and replied. Strange again nothing was changed on the Photos section at all, so there's no reason for that. Hopefully if you do what I ask it might fix up. Seems good on 5 machines we have tested/heard from. Thank you

OK here you go So, we're at that time of year when you stop at the phone box and feel really silly taking photos of it! Ishiuchi, Gala behind that and Kagura in the background

Last count 108 I think. If I can find the time this season, hoping to get to a few more in Tohoku this season.

Welcome nashiman. That's good to hear. One of the [ purely selfish, of course ] reasons for making the apps was to perhaps get a new audience interested and coming to the site. You might very well have found us anyway but I think a fair few people downloading the app are doing so out of curiosity. And, I thought it would be cool. Hope you enjoy your time here and your first winter.

Yes please do - and we would really like to know if you did have problems that are now cleared up, or indeed if you are still experiencing problems. Thanks.

I don't know muikabochi. I really want to know, but I doubt I will find out. Fingers crossed other people who were experiencing problems find the same. I dread to think just how many hours of work and frustration have we wasted on that lot, it really has been a right headache. But it is good to hear that it seems to be ok now.

Originally Posted By: SJ-David We'll get there! I was hoping we would already have been there, but obviously not quite. The functionality is all there, it's just this really frustrating stability issue. A new (ipad) version will hopefully by submitted tomorrow and while that is being shunted through the review process we'll be working on it further. We'll be uploading a fix to the iphone one before the end of today.

A new updated version of our iPad App is now available on the App Store (or should be within today in all regions). Hopefully this new version eliminates some stability issues in the original, though we are continuing to make some changes and hope to have a further update available in the next few weeks. If you do have comments about the App, please let us know at app@snowjapan.com. Thanks.

Thanks again. Originally Posted By: Slippery Jim As one who has (inadvertently) transgressed in the past, I've certainly appreciated your hard work on the site, the tremendous value provided and your readiness to hear and act on suggestions. Nothing wrong with a good argument, but never any need to put up with fools. That was just a small thing, you weren't intending to cause an issue and you totally understood our reasons when we contacted you --- totally the opposite of the kind of response I was talking about in the original post of course. We have no problem at all with

No, no shame lists or anything like that. I'm not hoping for any awards or accolades or anything, other than people who want to give us grief stay away. That's all really. I do appreciate the comments (and mails), thank you. That's not why I posted this, but it is always good to hear some positive feedback in between dealing with some of the other nonsense. Thanks again.

I thought I would just post a message on here before the season gets underway. First of all, I hope you like the updates we have made to the site last month. If you haven’t seen all of the changes and new stuff, you can read more on that here: http://www.snowjapanforums.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/383775/10_11_Site_Updates_General_inf.html There are still many things for us to do, and we are right now busy working on them, so look out for more on the News section in the coming weeks. --- The Serious Bit Anyone who knows us well will be aware of the care and effort t

You can specify a future release date when you submit it for review but as I mentioned it seems to take 7-8 days to go into review. If that date has passed once they review/approve your app - as was the case here - it gets released immediately as it is approved. So in our case we didn't really know when to expect it to be up there. I got a mail telling me last night at about 11:30pm that it was put into review, so I knew this morning it would either be up there or rejected. Fingers were crossed! If the date is still in the future after they approve, it gets released on that future