Good morning from Hakuba.

It is a very cold start to the day here. My thermometer outside saying -8C.

There's a light covering of snow on the ground though some places reporting none - and just a bit being reported by the resorts that I can find:

Hakuba Happo-one: 5cm (top of Gondola)
Hakuba Cortina 3cm (base and top)

Nice and cold, snow conditions should be great this morning. And things seem to be calm too. Just wrap up well.

Perhaps a little snow tomorrow but looking at the forecast it looks like we are down for some heavy snow again early in the week. Sounds good to me (though the rain that is currently shown on the forecast to be with us Monday before the snow appears sounds much less appealing!!)

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Your questions answered!
Why don’t your daily reports appear earlier?

* Please note: this is a re-worked and updated version of a message that was posted during last season.

To answer this question properly, it is important that everyone understands that SnowJapan is not a ski resort operator. Our daily reports are not official ski resort reports. We are an independent website. Our daily reports are not commissioned by anyone and no business influences the content of our reports. (In fact, some businesses do not like our reports - especially when it is raining, and we say so - but that’s a different story). Data within the report does not get updated automatically - we do a lot of manual checking ourselves every morning.

If we did own and operate a ski resort, we would make it a high priority to post snow reports as early as possible each morning. We would report how much new snow has fallen on the upper slopes and base, weather conditions, lift operations and snow depth. We would also have multiple and meaningful webcams pointing out to locations around the resort. And we’d make sure that those webcams were backed up with adequate bandwidth to keep them working properly. We think it is probably reasonable to think that ski resorts might ideally be doing the above things for their customers.

But... as I said, we do not own or operate a ski resort.

The fact is, a fair number of Japanese ski resorts only post their morning information updates after 8am - and in some cases, it is actually (much) later than that.

Our daily reports are generally a mix of observed snowfall data, observed weather conditions, personal comments about what is going on - as well as information/data that has been manually checked from official ski resort sources. This is all in the interest of creating interesting and as-detailed-as-possible reports.

If we posted our daily reports much earlier than we currently do (for example at 7am as someone suggested) reports would be missing what we consider to be important information. For example, we would often not be able to include things like how much fresh snow the ski resorts are reporting, or news of any ski lift disruption at the start of the day. Things like that.

Rather than simply being a very early morning report mainly for the benefit of people who are going to be queuing for the first ski lift of the day, we like to think of the SnowJapan daily reports more as a season-long ongoing commentary,

The reality is of course that people who are lucky enough to already be at a ski resort and preparing to hit the first lifts of the day can get a good idea of weather conditions by taking a look outside the window when they get up, asking accommodation staff and/or checking out official resort sites etc.

If we posted our daily reports mostly for the benefit of those first lift people - who very likely only account for a very small percentage of the total number of people reading the reports - they would not be as good or detailed as they are.

So, bottom line, we strongly feel that our way of doing things makes for better all-round reports.

One more very important thing.

There’s also the people who write the reports and their circumstances to consider. There is of course human effort involved in creating the reports. In particular the reports that cover wider areas - for example Niseko, Hakuba, Yuzawa - take quite a bit of time to put together every morning. Checking information, updating data, writing the report, checking…

The people who are doing this are not ski resort employees doing this as part of their job.

They probably need some coffee before posting. (Toast in some cases).

They may need to dig themselves out of their home if it is snowing heavily.

And they may need to see to any number of circumstances that life throws at them on any given morning.

So please keep all that in mind.

We aim to get the reports online as early as we can on every morning throughout the winter season. But there may be times when the perfect plan is not possible.

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There are many people new to SnowJapan using the site again this season and we are experiencing some very heavy traffic. People from all over the world are using the site. That is of course a really great thing and we warmly welcome everyone who is new to SnowJapan; as well as old friends. Thanks for visiting!

We are aware that we do some things in our own unique way, and we kind of like that. You’ll probably get used to it if you stick around.

If you wish to send us any comments, you can do so here. But please be aware that we are not able to answer specific questions about ski resorts, travel, accommodation and the like. That would be a full time job in itself!

Thank you for reading and all the best for the New Year.

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Ski resort opening status on Friday 5th January 2018:

Hakuba Happo-one

Operating lifts:
- All lifts are operating

Courses open:
- All course are now open
- Only the Kurobishi Off-Piste Area remains closed

Official snow depth:
- Kurobishi: 280cm
- Usagidaira: 145cm
- Lower: 95cm

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Hakuba Goryu

Operating lifts:
- All lifts operating as planned

Courses open:
- All courses are open (Adventure after safety checks)

Official snow depth:
- Top: 290cm
- Toomi: 120cm
- Iimori: 65cm

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Hakuba 47

Operating lifts:
- All lifts are operating (apart from Line D - which usually only operates when the Gondola is closed)

Courses open:
- All courses available
- The Tree Riding Zone is now open

Official snow depth:
- Top: 250cm
- Base: 95cm

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Tsugaike Kogen

Operating lifts:
- All lifts apart from Kane-no-naru-oka Skyliner I operating

Courses open:
- All course areas are open

Official snow depth:
- Tsuga-no-mori: 260cm
- Han-no-ki: 260cm
- Maruyama: 110cm
- Shirakaba: 230cm
- Oya-no-hara: 130cm
- Kane-no-naru-oka: 125cm

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Hakuba Cortina

Operating lifts:
- All lifts operating

Courses open:
- All courses open

Official snow depth:
- Top: 316cm
- Base: 185cm

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Hakuba Iwatake Snow Field

Operating lifts:
- Most lifts are operating with most courses open

Official snow depth:
- Top: 170cm
- Base: 90cm

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Hakuba Norikura Onsen

Operating lifts:
- All lifts apart from Alps Number 7 are operating

Official snow depth:
- 250cm

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Hakuba Valley Kashimayari

Operating lifts:
- Number 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 lifts are operating

Official snow depth:
- 140cm

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Hakuba Sanosaka

Operating lifts:
- All three lifts are operating

Official snow depth:
- 110cm