About
Who runs this site, what it measures for itself, how it is run, and where the data comes from.
Operator
Site: JAPANSNOWLINE
Operated by: Ski Salaryman (based in Kanto)
Established: 2026
Contact: [email protected]
Who runs this site
I am an office worker based in the Kanto region, and my job also has to do with ski areas. I started skiing in primary school and still head to ski areas in Niigata and Nagano most winters. I run this site on my own, separately from my employer or any ski area, and it promotes none of them.
Why this site exists. I have long felt that the quality of Japan’s snow is still not well known abroad. The same few names come up again and again: Niseko, Hakuba, Yuzawa. But Japan has many more ski areas with excellent snow, and with history and culture worth telling. I built this site to show them, with figures that measure every ski area in the country the same way.
Photos credited to “the site operator” were taken by me on my own ski trips.
How AI is used
The short introductions on ski area, area and prefecture pages are drafted by AI from sources such as official websites and local government documents, and I am reading and correcting them in turn. Each one lists its sources and the date they were read. Introductions I have finished checking are marked “reviewed by the editor”: for ski areas, 50 of 386 so far. The rest are still AI drafts.
Figures such as snowfall and rankings are not written by AI. They are calculated the same way for every place from weather data, by a system I built. The figures in articles come from those calculations.
What this site is
Daily snow depth, snowfall, temperature and wind for 3,069 snow resorts worldwide. All 397 ski areas in Japan are covered by prefecture, in both Japanese and English.
Each resort page gathers its official live cameras, nearby cameras, and videos from the resort's own channel (140 videos across 62 resorts). Links to official live cameras are checked automatically; dead links are removed from display.
What we measure ourselves
This site does not just collect what resorts publish. Every place is re-measured the same way, which is what makes it possible to compare across countries and regions.
Typical snowfall. All 3,069 resorts, calculated identically from the same weather reanalysis.
Snow quality. For all 397 ski areas in Japan, not how much falls but what falls: the temperature when it snows, how often more than 5 cm falls, how often it rains instead, and the wind.
Snow at onsen towns. The 79 onsen towns designated by Japan's Ministry of the Environment, measured on the same ruler as the ski areas.
Distance from the city. Ski areas with at least 300 cm of snow in a typical season, ranked by how close they are to a city of 200,000 people or more.
Checking against observations. The snowfall estimates are compared with measurements at 63 Japan Meteorological Agency stations, and how far off they are is published.
How all of this is measured, where the numbers stop being reliable, and a dated record of the mistakes we have found and fixed are on Data and scoring.
How the site is run
We do not forecast. This site produces no forecasts of its own. The "Where it’s going to snow" page lists forecast values exactly as published by our weather data provider.
Mistakes are fixed and recorded. When we find an error in a figure or an article, we correct it and record what was wrong, with a date. Articles whose conclusions changed are rewritten and carry a note saying so.
Check official sources before you travel. The figures here are estimates and information published by others. For operating and road conditions, check the resort, the road authority and the national weather service.
Data sources
Weather data: Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0)
Observations used to check snowfall: Japan Meteorological Agency, historical weather data
Resort names, coordinates and accommodation: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0)
Accommodation data and prices (Japan): Rakuten Travel (Supported by Rakuten Developers)
List of designated onsen towns: Japan's Ministry of the Environment
Nearby cameras and the snowfall map: Windy.com
Videos: resorts' official YouTube channels and videos posted by individual YouTubers (both shown through YouTube's embedded player). Clips I shot myself are labelled as mine
Map coastlines: Natural Earth (public domain)
Japanese prefecture and municipality data: Geospatial Information Authority of Japan
Corrections and takedown requests
If something here is wrong, or you are a publisher or operator who would like a link or headline removed, write to the address above or use the contact form, and we will act on it promptly.
Last updated: 2026-11-11