SnowJapan.Com#4

Fairly close to Numata, but spending more time in Niigata (and Nagano) recently.

It's always good to get those happy mails coming in soon after mailing out the winners

2 mails just got bounced back - don't exist..... seems some people register with dummy email addresses. Rather annoying... They can't win ticket though can they, haha. So 2 other people just got lucky. Please remember if you registered using an invalid email address, there's no point in entering our giveaways!

An email has just been sent to the 10 winners... so if you entered, check your mail!

Post them on SJ sunrise!

Basically you pay hosting companies for bandwidth and many people usually have a per-month allowance. We have a dedicated server for SJ, and it tears through over 10GB a day at the moment. (It's interesting to see how it changes day by day actually, with different promotions we do and the like).

Bandwidth can cost a lot guzzlers-baps. It all depends of course on how much is being used. When a site gets popular and lots of people use it, bandwidth numbers get bigger and bigger all the time. If a site has lots of photos, images and vids and the like that really mounts up. For example, since we introduced our SJ Photos section our bandwidth usage has increased significantly (and so our bandwidth costs have increased as well).

>> ENTER HERE This week we have 10 one-day lift tickets the JOETSU KOKUSAI resort in Niigata Prefecture. There will be 10 winners. Each will receive a one-day lift ticket voucher for the resort. WHAT ARE THE PRIZES? 10 lift tickets - 10 winners, each getting one ticket. The tickets are NONTRANSFERABLE (ie. only the winner can use them). GIVEAWAY PERIOD? Wednesday 1st February - Tuesday 7th February 2006 HOW DO I ENTER? Go here

We have contacted them about this...

Good to hear it went well. About photos of the party - if you send them to us we'll put up a special page on the site.... if possible send them in batches rather than one by one. Send them to editor @ snowjapan mail address. Looking forward to seeing them.

Want... to be.... at.... party ......

It is a very big area and apart from Kumanoyu/Yokoteyama/Shibutoge it's all connected. But those 3 are all skiers-only so you won't be minding about that. The resort at the other extreme, Okushiga Kogen, is also skiers-only. That still leaves a very big area for you to enjoy though!

Here's the Shibutoge page http://www.snowjapan.com/e/resorts/resortdetail.php?resid=262

Quote: We got a couple of miles up into the hills only to be confronted with the road disappearing under a piste, and families happily skiing right past our front bumper. That's the one! A nice drive from late April until November..... Hope you enjoy it, remember to take some pics now!

Hi there That is a little confusing. Basically the Yokoteyama part of Shiga Kogen is skiers-only. Behind Yokoteyama is an area called Shibutoge - and the only way to get to Shibutoge (until late spring) is via Yokoteyama... because of all of the snow that blocks the road off up there. Shibutoge allows snowboarders. So what I think they are meaning is that if you want to snowboard at Shibutoge when that road is blocked off, you'll have to carry your board up there. Not many people do that, which is why you will see Shibutoge saying they get 99% skiers. When spring

An update on the Emergency Telephone, good to see they have the light working in there: We also found an Emergency Vending Machine in Yuzawa last night:

The winners are notified by email, no need to worry Sorry we haven't updated the winners page this season - we will do, it's just that we seem to have a never ending list of "things to do"!

Will do - will bring a bunch over.

sunrise - the same post went up 4 times during the day, and as well as posting on here we did email him twice (without a response) --- there is not much more we can do if we want to avoid, er, flooding We're sure he'll be back fairly soon!

Not sure ug - we were just wondering that too.... (It has been deleted now, but for those of you wondering what is happening, rahul posted exactly the same thing for the 4th time just a few moments ago) We've given rahul a cooling off period!

rahul. We already deleted your repeated post once this morning, and now you posted exactly the same thing once again (for a third time - it was above this post, but has now also been deleted!) Please refrain from posting the same things more than once on the forums. If we delete any post, it is for a reason..... so reposting what was deleted will annoy us and we might lock your account. If you have any questions, please mail us directly rather than discussing this on the forums. Thank you

Added the new photo to the gallery http://www.snowjapan.com/e/gallery/index-snowy-japan.html

Yes, we'll put it on the new gallery sometime soon. Got some real strange looks taking that one!

If you are ever in the Yuzawa area and need the phone, you might want to check out this emergency phonebox - between Yuzawa and Ishiuchi on Route 17. Or maybe not. (Actually a few weeks back it was completely covered - you could just about see the pole thing sticking out of the top!)

We are - still! been doing this for 2 months or so now - going through our database of resorts and updating it all and getting rid of things that are out of date. (We decided to do a proper job of it rather than rush and cut corners - currently about 300 of the main resorts data is totally up-to-date for this season) Anyway back to the point! We have at one time had over 600 resorts in our database, but that number is on it's way down as places close and quietly shut down (and get deleted). The number is probably between 500-600, but of course many of those being the really tiny plac