Greetings to you all from Zao Onsen!

Here we are in November once again, excitedly looking forward to the new snow season.

It really is a great time of the year. As always, the autumn ‘koyo’ leaves have been spectacular in the region. Really beautiful. Things get gradually colder, the leaves drop, the first snow falls on the mountain and anticipation of the ski and snowboard season grows… what’s not to like about all that?!

It’s always great to see that first snow of the season – a sprinkling on 30th October. There was also a sprinkling of wet snow down here last Sunday morning.

The Zao Echo Line road has now closed for the winter season, and is planned to be closed all the way through until late April 2018. The section of the road that is closed is between the Zao Liza World resort here in Yamagata and the Zao Sumikawa ski resort on the other side of the mountains in Miyagi Prefecture.

The official opening ceremony for the resort is planned for 11am on Saturday 9th December over on the Uwanodai base area. Hopefully, the ski lifts might be able to start operating before then… it’s all going to depend on snowfall.

If you want some pre-season reading and see how previous seasons went, do take a look back over the Zao Now archive reporting on SnowJapan. You can find links to them all below.

I’ll post some occasional updates over the next few weeks with any news. Of course, once the season gets going reports should appear on a daily basis.

So, here’s to a very snowy and successful 2017-2018 season.

See you soon!