Hello and good morning from Nozawa Onsen on this last day of the 2020-2021 season - Sunday 9th May 2021.

It looks like we will have a sunny day with some early cloud due to clear and temperatures approaching about 20C in the village today.

The Nagasaka Gondola, two Yamabiko quads, Uenotaira quad and Skyline connecting pair lifts are scheduled to open today. From tomorrow, they can all rest. Otsukaresama deshita!

In my reports this time round I have observed 798cm of snowfall down at base, and the numbers posted by the ski area each day add up to approaching 12m of snowfall on the upper Yamabiko and Uenotaira areas. One or two numbers were missed, including early season snowfall not being reported by the resort, so it will actually have been over 12m.

After the disappointment of last season - not just here but across lots of Japan - that is a much better showing and much more like 'normal'. That makes me happy. There has been some excellent conditions to enjoy. For those able to be here, of course. (I feel for the many of you who were not able to come).

The ski area has been able to remain open until today and while Uenotaira has started to look patchy, snow cover up at Yamabiko is pretty good.

Naski has already hung up his/her skis and snowboard and will no doubt continue to get greener and brighter as the warmth of the late spring and summer increases. No doubt our fave local vegetable will be back in time for next season.

As will I. All of my archive reports are here to read at leisure at any time. They tell the story of the season.

This is where I leave you for about six months. I wish you all the best, stay safe and all that... and let us hope that 2021-2022 will not only bring us a lot of snowfall but also friends and visitors from overseas (in some format). Fingers crossed.

See you in November.

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[Original daily numbers published by Nozawa Onsen and compiled by Nozawa Now reporter for SnowJapan]

The ‘total snowfall accumulation so far’ table above shows the amount of snowfall that has been reported on the upper areas of Nozawa Onsen. The numbers used are reported each day by Nozawa Onsen. They were manually updated for this report with any new snowfall reported by the resort. This table was first introduced in this report, including a longer explanation


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End of season general message from SnowJapan
This message is being posted on all of the Now daily reports

First of all, we hope that you and yours are keeping well.

What another strange season 2020-2021 has been.

In terms of snow and conditions, the story of the season can be found in the respective reports. Each region had its own story, of course, but it was certainly great to be able to get back to reporting some heavy snowfall this time round. Spring did once again seem to arrive earlier than we would like, but those fortunate enough to be able to enjoy the snow were able to experience some very fine conditions.

Challenges

Ski areas around Japan made various efforts to deal with the covid-19 situation and while there were some changes to operations here and there, most were able to open for the season. Some ski areas and regions have been affected more than others, but it’s probably safe to say that is has been a challenging period for pretty much everyone involved. In particular, destinations that have enjoyed a lot of foreign visitors in recent years have probably felt a big shock.

Perhaps inevitably, there has been a generally more subdued atmosphere and feel to the season.

Decisions

We made a few decisions before the winter started.

Unfortunately, it was getting obvious that international travel restrictions would be preventing people from entering Japan over the 2020-2021 season. And it was clearly going to be a great disappointment to many.

Even so, we wanted to keep SnowJapan updated as close to normal as possible. We asked our reporters to mention ‘the news’ when it seemed appropriate, but not to dwell on it too much. After all, people are not coming to SnowJapan to read about covid every day. We hope we got that difficult balance right.

Daily reports and updates are an important part of the site. They are popular with people while they are visiting Japan, but people also read our archive reports to see how previous seasons turned out and to make comparisons. Indeed, this last season we have noticed that a lot of you have been following from overseas – even if you weren’t able to come and enjoy the snow in person.

We would like to say a big public thank you to the reporters who did another fine job covering the 2020-2021 winter season on SnowJapan, in some challenging circumstances. Thanks to those efforts, we have another full season of data to add to our records.

Hopefully that information will continue to be of value to people making plans for a future visit to Japan.

Questions

The world knows much more about covid-19 in May 2021 than it did in April 2020, but in some ways we end this season with some of the same questions we were asking last year…

Everyone wants to know what the situation will be in six months’ time. There’s definitely brighter wider news and reasons to be positive, but big questions remain on how ‘open’ Japan might be for overseas visitors by the time the snow starts falling again.

No-one knows, of course.

Like last year, all we can do is try to keep a positive mindset and hope that progress will be made, and that overseas friends will be able to visit once again.

Looking Ahead

Whatever happens regarding the international travel situation, SnowJapan plans to be here reporting the 2021-2022 winter season.

2020-2021 might now be over, but as usual we are busy working on various stuff for the future. We’ll let you know what we’re up to later in the year.

In the meantime, if you are interested in old ski areas from the past around Japan, the SnowJapanHistory (www.snowjapanhistory.com) website will continue to be updated regularly. Over there you can find details on over 160 ski areas, including at least one that closed back in the 1960s (!)

Anyway, that’s it for now. Thanks for reading and your support. If you want to get in touch, as always you can contact us using this form.

Wherever you are in the world, stay safe… and we’ll see you later in the year.

(Hopefully with good news!)