A Singapore Fund Is Spending ¥200 Billion on Myoko. We Measured What It Bought.
Patience Capital Group bought Madarao in 2022 and Myoko Suginohara from Seibu in 2023, and says it will spend about ¥200 billion over ten years building Japan's Aspen. The snow record says it picked the right valley: Madarao is 128th in the world and Seki Onsen, 15 km away, is 19th — while Niseko is 521st. The catch is rain.
Two of the ski areas in the Myoko valley have changed hands in the last four years, and both went to the same buyer.
Madarao Kogen was sold by Abira Corporation to Patience Capital Group on 1 November 2022. Myoko Suginohara followed on 9 November 2023, sold by Seibu Holdings, with Seibu staying on to run it (Bloomberg; Ski Bumps Labo, 12 November 2023). Neither price was disclosed.
Who they are
Patience Capital Group was founded in 2019 and works from Singapore and Tokyo. Its founder and chief executive, Ken Chan, previously ran the Japan business of GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund; the firm says its senior team has managed more than USD 25 billion in assets (PCG). It runs two vehicles, the Japan Tourism Fund and a residential fund.
Chan has put a number on the plan: roughly ¥200 billion (about USD 1.4 billion) over about ten years, with some USD 500 million in the first three to four, to turn Myoko Kogen into a resort spoken of alongside Aspen, Whistler and St Moritz — luxury hotels, housing for the thousands of staff such a resort needs, and a retail street (Patience Realty, 13 October 2023).
That is the pitch. Here is the mountain.
On snow volume, they bought better than Niseko
| Ski area | Season snowfall | World rank (of 3,065) | Rank in Japan (of 393) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seki Onsen (same valley, not PCG) | 689 cm | 19 | 14 |
| Akakura Kanko | 445 cm | 116 | 56 |
| Madarao (PCG) | 432 cm | 128 | 64 |
| Myoko Suginohara (PCG) | 357 cm | 267 | 100 |
| Niseko Grand Hirafu | 289 cm | 521 | 158 |
Madarao gets 50% more snow than Niseko Grand Hirafu, and the valley contains the 19th-snowiest ski area on earth, 13 km up the road. If the thesis is “the next Niseko,” the raw material is not in question.
The two hills they own are opposites
| Madarao | Myoko Suginohara | |
|---|---|---|
| Season snowfall | 432 cm | 357 cm |
| Worst of 12 winters | 230 cm | 230 cm |
| Year-to-year variation | 19% | 15% |
| Base elevation | 918 m | 739 m |
| Vertical | 421 m | 1,118 m |
| Runs / pisted length | 35 / 15.4 km | 22 / 21.4 km |
| Snow quality rank in Japan | 63 | 48 |
| Days with rain in winter | 16.5% | 11.5% |
Madarao is the high, cold, tree-run hill with almost no vertical. Suginohara is one of the longest lift-served descents in Japan — 1,118 m of vertical, more than Hakuba Happo-One’s 1,077 m — with a lower, warmer base. Owning both, PCG has the quality and the scale in one valley, 13 km apart. That combination is rare in Japan, and it is a more coherent purchase than either hill looks on its own.
The catch nobody in the press releases mentions
| Days with rain in winter | Mean temperature on snow days | |
|---|---|---|
| Niseko Grand Hirafu | 6.9% | −6.2°C |
| Myoko Suginohara | 11.5% | −4.4°C |
| Madarao | 16.5% | −4.2°C |
| Hakuba Happo-One | 22.0% | −4.1°C |
| Nozawa Onsen | 36.5% | −4.0°C |
Myoko gets far more snow than Niseko, and it also gets rain that Niseko does not: one winter day in nine at Suginohara, one in six at Madarao, against one in fourteen at Hirafu. This is the trade the whole of Honshu makes — more snow, warmer, wetter at the bottom — and it is why Niseko became what it is despite ranking 521st in the world for snowfall.
A ¥200 billion resort aimed at the people who currently fly to Niseko will be judged on the days it rains at the base, not on the season total. The most expensive part of that plan may turn out to be elevation: Suginohara’s top station is at 1,857 m, and the money is being spent at the bottom.
What exists right now
Myoko is our Myoko and Joetsu area page — 10 ski areas, of which five have official live cameras, with today’s snow at each. Suginohara’s adult day ticket was ¥8,000 last season; this season’s price is not published yet. Seki Onsen, the 19th-snowiest ski area on earth, runs two chairlifts and a single marked run.
How this was measured
Snowfall is the December–March total at each ski area’s coordinates from ERA5 reanalysis (Open-Meteo Historical Weather API), averaged over the 12 winters from 2014/15 to 2025/26, on the same method for all 3,065 ski areas on this site. Rain-day share and mean temperature on snow days come from the nearest weather station’s observations, and the snow-quality rank is our own measure across 393 Japanese ski areas. Runs, lifts and elevations are from OpenSkiMap (OpenStreetMap, ODbL). Ownership, dates and investment figures are as reported by the sources linked above.
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