Japan is the Size of Montana, With as Many Ski Resorts as the Entire US

Skiing in Japan went through the same bubble as the rest of the country. The sport peaked in the early ‘90s, at one point, 18.6 million Japanese were active skiers, roughly 1 in 7 of the entire population. Then the bubble popped and the ski scene popped with it.

By 2020 that number had crashed to 2.7 million skiers, only 15% of peak. The industry has only stayed standing because of the massive wave of foreign skiers over the last 20 years, and really the last 5 post-COVID.

But the recovery didn’t come soon enough to save a lot of resorts. You don’t realize this, but Japan is small. It’s roughly the size of Montana (which has 16 ski resorts), smaller than California (which has roughly 29). The US is 26 times bigger by land area.

And yet at the peak of the ski boom, Japan had around 700 ski resorts. Today it’s down to ~450 — still roughly the same number as the entire United States (~486 currently operating). A country smaller than California with nearly as many ski hills as the whole US. The density is absurd.

What it looked like on the ground was a landscape much closer to the commuter resorts of the Northeast where I grew up than the mega-resorts of Park City, Aspen, Vail. Small, local, tailored to a regional economy instead of a destination crowd. Hokkaido alone has 92 resorts. Nagano has 80. Niigata has 46. Those are single prefectures running more ski areas than most US states have in their entirety (New York leads the US with 52).

What initially got me interested in Japan’s abandoned ski resorts is backcountry riding. One thing that’s become really popular in the Northeast is skinning up old abandoned resorts to get wide-open pow turns. There’s not a ton of above-treeline terrain back home, so old resorts with cleared trails are the perfect place to hike up and ride down.

So we’re currently building an abandoned ski resort layer onto Nipponhomes so we can go hunt these places and ride down them. Maybe add a social layer too — people post a picture from the top with a quick breakdown of conditions... that would be pretty sick.

And after learning more about these resorts and how many have closed, how many people have lost their jobs in the process, it sort of changed my perspective on so-called gatekeeping. I don’t feel bad “blowing up” these ski resorts anymore.

You can be selfish and try to keep your hidden gems to yourself, but you’re doing the place you love a disservice. Domestic skier numbers are down 75% from peak. These resorts need bodies through the lift line, not everyone huddled around the same handful of internationally recognized names.

People hit Hakuba. Myoko. Iiyama. Yuzawa. Then fly up to Hokkaido for Niseko and Rusutsu. But in between is literally hundreds of lesser-known resorts that aren’t that hard to get to. Geto Kogen is the perfect example, 4-hour bullet train from Tokyo, ~25-minute drive from the station. You’ve got the resorts up in Aomori like Aomori Spring, and the deep cuts in Akita that are genuinely difficult to get to but worth it.

We’ve built some investment guides about our favorite ski towns. Otaru, Myoko, Asahikawa. They’re packed with the kind of data we wish existed when we first started buying in Japan.

So go explore. One of the best parts of backcountry skiing, or skiing in general, is discovery, feeling like you’re Daniel Boone out in the wilderness. And when you buy an akiya in Japan, you have this base to go explore a ridiculous amount of ski resorts in a place only as big as Montana.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I love the diversity of ski lodges you see in Japan. Everything in the US looks the same, these manufactured cookie-cutter villages. Japan could not be more different. There’s a ski resort in Otaru called Asari Onsen that has a ski lodge that looks like it belongs in 1980s coke-fueled Miami. I think that’s awesome.

So go ski the ones nobody talks about so they don’t close. Skin up the ones that already did. Either way, you’re getting off the well-trodden paths and that’s the whole point.

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This content is for informational and educational purposes only and reflects my personal opinions and experience. I am not a licensed financial advisor, tax advisor, or attorney. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and consult qualified professionals before making any investment decisions.