This year has been great for the autumn colours - the scenery in this region has been truly spectacular this year, and even now in the village area the colours of autumn are doing their thing. It won't be long now before the trees are looking barer and winter is with us.

We have had a few short blasts of winter like conditions actually. Around 2nd/3rd November there was a fair amount of white snow cover on the the mountain, though not down to the village area level. Great to see the white cover, but it has now gone for the moment again. The Echo Line road connecting Zao with Miyagi Prefecture is now closed for the season and everyone in the village is busy preparing for the coming winter season.

As always Zao will open basically as soon as there is enough snow and we can hope that may be around early December. We will just have to wait and see. I will be posting more in the coming weeks as we approach opening with the latest.