SnowJapan.Com#2

I am sure the vast majority of users know exactly what is meant by it.

Over 800 now I hear. Most of them are small 1s and 2s. There have been a few 5 aftershocks and they are pretty powerful but usually not in themselves enough to bring a house down. But as they are aftershocks quite a lot of places have been structurally compromised and already in a bad way. I further big shake might bring them down completely. but there have not been that many reports of destruction of buildings over the last few weeks even with all the aftershocks. (Apart from the problem with the 'natural dams' in Yamakoshi-mura and the flooding). Yes it is very stressful and intim

Said we wouldn't warn again, but we will. We want this line of talk to stop - whilst the few people involved may be enjoying themselves, many other users are getting fed up with it. Any further posts like the above, and the poster(s) will get a one-month automatic ban from the forums. OK?

Can we calm down here, please. ....before we start to have to think of (surely no) closing threads and banning members from the forums for any period of time we choose (maybe even forever if we're in a really bad mood) No more warnings, we'll just do it if required. We really don't want to do that.

After reading some suggestions sent in to us, we've modified the chat so that now whenever someone posts a message, a small beep can be heard. Don't worry! You can turn this beep sound off by clicking on the speaker icon within the chat. If you don't delete cookies on your machine, next time you use the chat it should remember that "off" setting, so you shouldn't need to do that every time. Thanks for the comments and suggestions.

At a meeting today it seems that, because of the recent Niigata-ken earthquake, a massive 95% of all hotel bookings in Yuzawa between 23rd and 31st Oct were cancelled, with a similar percentage of cancellations being reported for November since the beginning of the month. They've decided to launch a camapign primarily in Tokyo to try to get people back in time for the ski season..... no details on what that will actually involve yet. We wish them luck. We are based in Yuzawa and have seen the effects of all this - almost no-one in the town. It's not been a fun few weeks for anyone

The last 3 or 4 days there have been about 10-15 aftershocks each day. Most of them have been shindo 1 & 2 in the main Ojiya / Kawaguchi area, but there have been the occasional bigger ones that can be felt as far away as Yuzawa and Gunma. There was a 5kyo yesterday as you probably saw on the news (3 in Yuzawa), and a 4 (1-2 in Yuzawa) that woke me up this morning at 4am. We really need them to stop.

Yes they are doing their best to persuade people not to cancel for winter. This current koyo season is already dead though - hotels on average having 90% cancellations. Quite a lot of cancellations for winter as well. If these aftershocks don't stop soon (please!!!), things will sadly become even grimmer.

Toque, and others.... Quote: SJ - We going to get more space for pictures at all??????? Sorry for the delay. This earthquake situation here in Niigata has delayed things a bit. That and a few other things coming fairly soon

Yuzawa isn't really feeling any of the aftershocks over the last few days. There are still some 20 or so a day - mostly 1s and 2s - but they can't really be felt here. Fingers crossed. This page updates with a general report every 3 hours: http://www.jma.go.jp/JMA_HP/jp/quake/ They are still saying that theres a chance of a mag 5 within the next few weeks, hopefully they're just being cautious.

Lots of entries so far! We have made some changes to the Specials page/entry form/giveaways mechanism to make it easier to use for both members and people who go to the page for the first time, not logged in. If you have already entered the Giveaway - don't worry, we have your entry! Look out for more updates to the site over the coming weeks......

We'll PM you with details, er, sorry, with a stern message in which we'll shout at you for even thinking that we would considering taking any bribes.

Yes, we are a bit worried that some people are starting to talk to themselves.....

You can make a new account on the forums here with an almost identical name, and just use that for chat... and keep your current on for the forum - that way you don't lost all your history.

Fattwins - sorry, our mistake... please try again. And if anyone else tried to enter in the last few hours but were told that you had actually already entered (when you actually hadn't done anything!) --- please try again. It should be ok now. Thanks

Also, this might help. Towards the top of this page: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/insider/chat-help.html there is a list of users that are online using the chat at the time you view that page. (Refresh browser to get the latest info)

to green - and all the other people who might have logged in to find no-one there...... Just looking at the transcripts from today, 73 people have logged in to the chat since early morning. A fair number of those have logged in, found no-one else there, and logged out again. There are basically 2 ways to use this new application: a) login and just hope someone will be there or arrange with friends a time when you should all login / login during one of the official "chat session" that we hope to organise during the season a) works with the forums of course, but not o

SNOW JAPAN GIVEAWAY It's that time of the year again. Well, a bit earlier than usual actually. But we've got a whole bunch of cool giveaways lined up for the coming season, so we've got to get started! The first Snow Japan Giveaway for the new season is now online - and what a great one this is! The prize is a 2 nights / 3 day holiday at the Club Med Sahoro resort in Hokkaido. TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY AND FULL DETAILS: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/insider/special.php DETAILS OF THE PRIZE: A 2 nights/3days holiday at Club Med Sahoro (Hokkai

Mr Tech is not here at the moment, but does this help for now? >> 8000 through 8009

If you want, there is no censoring. Remember that we get transcripts of everything said in chat though..... And do read the help page - we can ban people if we want to (cue evil laugh), and a ban is effective for the chat AND the forums. Don't want to do that though (take back evil laugh)

Yes, if you doubleclick on a username on the right hand side list, a private chat room will appear......

We'll look forward to that! What you might need with that is to delete your browser cache, delete temporary files and login again.

We think they will compliment each other, with the Forum of course remaining the main thing, and chat being a nice addition for a quick conversation. The Forum is easy to come onto for a short time and leave a message, leaving an ongoing conversation online for all to read - and you can come back at any time and add to it, etc. With chat, we're hoping that friend will be able to maybe arrange times to meet up and be online at the same time for that up-to-date real-time chat, making it (hopefully) really useful. We're also planning on arranging some special "chat sessions" with r

Probably Friday....

Yes, you will be getting that. Just need a bit of time, making some changes to the system.