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Kokudo have announced that 3 resorts in Niigata will not be opening this year:

 

Tsuchitaru (Yuzawa)

Mikuni (Yuzawa)

Ojiya Yamamoto (Ojiya)

 

We already knew about Tsuchitaru. All of them are fairly small, Mikuni is the one that is a few km to the side of Naeba. The Ojiya is a really tiny place in Ojiya, which was pretty badly hit by the earthquake last year.

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So some of the others struggle on.

 

These must be the smallest in Niigata that they have. I actually went to Mikuni a number of years back. The snow was great, pretty small place it was.

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  • SnowJapan Moderator

Mikuni was a weekend only resort last season.

 

About Yuzawa Nakazato - they have said something to the effect that they will make a decision whether to close that resort or not after seeing how business goes this season.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The dreadful 2-run Saregaland Plana that opened 2 seasons ago as the 5th snow resort in largely snowless Ehime is 'taking a holiday' in its 3rd season due to massive losses last year.

 

So now there is a big gash in the hillside above Matsuyama with some large, useless steel fixtures, and a very large wooden building that are probably just going to rot there.

 

What were they thinking...? If only they had 'planning permission' in Japan.

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They opened snow resort in Ehime 2 seasons ago? What were they thinking? Actually, it's easy to get 'planning permission' in Japan everywhere.

 

Most Japanese ski resorts are struggling helplessly. To close ski resorts, they have to tear down those steel fixtures and restore to the mountain like before they built ski resort. But they don't have enough money for this and just waiting for everything going to rot there...

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Was that place or maybe just access to it built using public money by any chance? In that case, the plans and business model would have gone in years ago, and they would have built it for the sake of building it. Its the "The money will go to Kochi otherwise" mentality.

 

"kyuugyou" after two years, that is ridiculous.

 

I reckon unused ski fields would a good place to reintroduce hemp production. It was only the Americans that stopped it.

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No, I think it was a private initiative. There was already a road going up to it. The idea was to use a new kind of 'doesn't turn to corn man-made snow' to tempt Ehime kiddies from flying to Hiroshima and Tottori for the day. But the 1 and half runs and the man-made snow which unfortunately melted before turning to corn wasn't very appealing.

 

The other sales point was the nighter with the wonderful night views of Matsuyama. While it is a lovely view, you can get it by driving five minutes up to where I live rather than driving an hour and a half in the dark to the poxy snow park.

 

I'm not sure what the difference is between taking a holiday and closing, because taking a holiday won't generally tend to increase the customer base.

 

A case of rocks in the head I'm afraid.

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Yeah, I went once for a morning on the weekend and there were a lot of floppers and divers and falling leaves and stork skiers cluttering the 1 and half slopes. Enough to people to get in your way, but probably not enough to turn a profit.

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