We have had much snow in ski resorts in and around Matsumoto this season.
I went skiing in Nozawa Onsen on Feb 7 and Hakuba Happo-one on Feb 11.
Nozawa Onsen is located in Japan’s deepest snow area. In the ski resort, the snow was 3.3 meters deep (in 2006, it was 5.2 meters deep!).
Feb 7 was just after heavy snow, so we enjoyed new deep powder snow

Hakuba is getting popular among foreigners, especially Australians. We visited a hotel whose owner is also an Australian. We were little surprised that even McDonald’s exists at the top of the gondola. Hakuba Happo-one, where the Downhill and Super G courses of the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics exist, is two hours far from Matsumoto downtown.

In Norikura Snow Resort, which is only one hour far from Matsumoto downtown and also popular for great power snow by high altitude (1500-2000m), an event “Children Day” was held today. Under the beautiful blue sky and white peak of Mt. Norikura (3025m) of Japan Alps, many children and parents enjoyed some events including snowmobiling.