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Can You Ski in Japan in November? What Is Open in 2026, and How Much Snow Falls
Two Japanese ski areas have opened on machine-made snow and 17 more plan to open by 30 November. Across twelve Novembers at 357 ski areas, Hokkaido's typical November is about two-fifths of its January; Nagano and Niigata get about an eighth. And November swings more than any winter: from a third of normal to more than double.
Yes, you can ski in Japan in November. By 11 November 2026 two ski areas had opened, both on machine-made snow, and 17 more have announced an opening before the month ends. Most of those open on the last Saturday, 28 November, and several open only part of the mountain.
Whether there is natural snow under you is a different question, and the answer changes sharply from north to south and from one year to the next. We have the November snowfall at every Japanese ski area for the last twelve years, calculated on one method. This is what it shows.
What is open, and what opens when
| Opens | Ski area | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Open since 23 Oct | Snow Park Yeti, Mount Fuji | Machine-made snow. On 10 November it was running 9:00–18:00 with a 30–60 cm base |
| Open since 31 Oct | Karuizawa Prince, Nagano | Machine-made snow; two runs and two lifts on opening day |
| 13 Nov | Gransnow Okuibuki, Shiga | Its earliest opening ever, on snow from 45 snowmaking machines |
| 20 Nov | Sapporo Kokusai, Hokkaido | The first big opening on natural snow |
| 21 Nov | Sapporo Teine, Hokkaido | |
| 21 Nov | Hakuba Goryu, Nagano | The lower Toomi area only, on machine-made snow |
| 21 Nov | Shirakaba 2in1, Nagano; Washigatake, Gifu | |
| 28 Nov | Niseko Grand Hirafu, Niseko Moiwa, Rusutsu, Kiroro, Hokkaido | At Moiwa, the two pair lifts only until 12 December |
| 28 Nov | Furano, Hokkaido | The date its season pass starts; the resort has not named an opening day |
| 28 Nov | Kagura, Niigata | The Kagura and Mitsumata areas; Tashiro follows on 19 December |
| 28 Nov | Nozawa Onsen, Nagano | An “early-season period” until the opening festival on 19 December |
| 28 Nov | Nekoma Mountain, Fukushima | The North Area; the South Area opens on 12 December |
| 28 Nov | Tengendai Kogen, Yamagata | The date its season pass starts; a pre-opening is planned for 27 November |
| 28 Nov | Tambara, Gunma; Hunter Mountain Shiobara, Tochigi |
Dates are from each resort’s own website and are plans: a resort opens when it has the snow, and it can open late. The full list, updated daily, is on our opening dates page.
Two things stand out. Everything open before 20 November runs on machine-made snow. And the first natural-snow openings are all in Hokkaido, around Sapporo, a week before the big names.
How much snow falls in November
We added up November’s snowfall at 357 Japanese ski areas for each of the last twelve years, 2014 to 2025, and set it beside the same ski area’s January.
| Region | Ski areas | Typical November | November as a share of January |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hokkaido | 82 | 23 cm | 42% |
| Tohoku | 74 | 15 cm | 17% |
| Nagano and Niigata | 104 | 12 cm | 12% |
| Rest of Honshu and the west | 97 | 4 cm | 6% |
“Typical” is the median ski area in each region. Snowfall is from a weather model that under-reads mountain snow, in Hokkaido most of all, so read the share of January rather than the centimetres.
Hokkaido’s November is about two-fifths of its January. In Nagano and Niigata it is about an eighth. The ski areas that will be buried in January are, in November, mostly bare below the upper lifts.
Fifty-one of the 357 average 30 cm or more in November. Thirty of them are in Hokkaido, eleven in Nagano and Niigata, eight in Tohoku and two elsewhere. The snowiest November in Japan belongs to Kurodake in the Daisetsuzan range, at 110 cm, and its ski area does not open until 1 December.
November is the least dependable month
A whole Japanese winter does not vary much. Over the same twelve years, the country’s December-to-March snowfall ran from 63% of average in the worst winter to 122% in the best.
November is nothing like that.
| November of | Snowfall across Japan’s ski areas, against the 12-year average |
|---|---|
| 2022 | 33% |
| 2014 | 39% |
| 2018 | 62% |
| 2015, 2020 | 79% |
| 2019 | 88% |
| 2025 | 98% |
| 2024 | 106% |
| 2016, 2021 | 110% |
| 2023 | 166% |
| 2017 | 229% |
In two Novembers of twelve, Japan’s ski areas got about a third of the usual snow. In one they got more than double. Hokkaido alone swung from 41% in 2014 to 190% in 2017.
That is why resorts announce November dates and then, some years, move them. It is also why a November trip booked months ahead is a bet in a way that a January trip is not.
The November openers, one by one
For the ski areas that open on natural snow in November, these are the twelve Novembers.
| Ski area | Opens | Average November | Least and most | Novembers with 30 cm or more |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sapporo Kokusai | 20 Nov | 56 cm | 23–135 cm | 11 of 12 |
| Kagura | 28 Nov | 49 cm | 13–100 cm | 9 of 12 |
| Kiroro | 28 Nov | 42 cm | 17–90 cm | 10 of 12 |
| Sapporo Teine | 21 Nov | 36 cm | 7–89 cm | 7 of 12 |
| Tengendai Kogen | 28 Nov | 34 cm | 5–84 cm | 6 of 12 |
| Niseko Moiwa | 28 Nov | 33 cm | 8–90 cm | 4 of 12 |
| Tambara | 28 Nov | 32 cm | 5–64 cm | 6 of 12 |
| Nekoma Mountain | 28 Nov | 27 cm | 1–80 cm | 4 of 12 |
| Rusutsu | 28 Nov | 22 cm | 8–56 cm | 3 of 12 |
| Hunter Mountain Shiobara | 28 Nov | 8 cm | 1–18 cm | 0 of 12 |
| Washigatake | 21 Nov | 8 cm | 0–32 cm | 1 of 12 |
| Shirakaba 2in1 | 21 Nov | 5 cm | 0–13 cm | 0 of 12 |
November totals include snow that fell after opening day, and snowfall is not depth on the ground: early snow often melts between storms.
Sapporo Kokusai is the dependable one. It has had 30 cm or more in eleven Novembers of twelve, and its worst, 23 cm, is more than Rusutsu gets in an average one. Kiroro, its neighbour, is close behind. Kagura is the one Honshu area in the same class.
At the bottom of the table the natural snow is not what opens the lifts. Hunter Mountain, Washigatake and Shirakaba 2in1 have averaged under 10 cm in November on our figures, so a November opening there rests on snowmaking.
Four November openers are left out of this table on purpose: Niseko Grand Hirafu, Furano, Nozawa Onsen and Hakuba Goryu. Our weather model works on a grid, and at these four the grid point sits roughly 300 to 540 m below the middle of the ski area. In midwinter that matters little. In November, when the line between rain and snow runs across the mountain, it matters a great deal, and the model can show rain where the upper lifts get snow. For Niseko, read the Moiwa row: it is the neighbouring ski area and its grid point is within 30 m of mid-mountain.
This November so far
The first nine days of November 2026 were snowy in Hokkaido.
| Ski area | Snowfall, 1–9 November 2026 | Its average for the whole of November |
|---|---|---|
| Kurodake | 37 cm | 110 cm |
| Niseko Moiwa | 32 cm | 33 cm |
| Sapporo Kokusai | 25 cm | 56 cm |
| Kiroro | 23 cm | 42 cm |
| Rusutsu | 17 cm | 22 cm |
| Tambara | 16 cm | 32 cm |
| Sapporo Teine | 15 cm | 36 cm |
| Kagura | 9 cm | 49 cm |
Niseko Moiwa has already had about as much as it gets in an average November, and Rusutsu three-quarters of it. Across Japan, 55 ski areas had 10 cm or more in those nine days, 40 of them in Hokkaido. In Honshu the season has barely begun: Kagura has had 9 cm against an average November of 49 cm.
Nine days do not make a month, and a snowy start has melted before. Our snow report and the list of where it has snowed in Japan update every morning.
If you are planning a November trip
- To ski on a fixed date before 20 November, go where the snow is made: Yeti, Karuizawa or Okuibuki. Expect a run or two.
- For natural snow in November, go to Hokkaido in the last ten days, and to the Sapporo side first. Sapporo Kokusai and Kiroro have the best November record of the areas that open.
- For Niseko, Hakuba or Nozawa, treat late November as a preview. Lifts run, but on part of the mountain, and some resorts price it that way: the Niseko all-mountain day ticket is ¥8,800 from 28 November to 11 December against ¥13,500 at peak, and Furano’s is ¥7,500 for its first week against ¥9,000.
- If the trip has to be good, wait. In Hokkaido, December snows about as much as January; in Nagano and Niigata it is about four-fifths. Those figures are in our opening dates guide and the worst Decembers are in Booking Japan for Christmas?.
How this was measured
Opening dates and what is running come from each resort’s own website. Yeti’s hours and base are from its site on 10 November 2026; Karuizawa’s two runs and two lifts are from its status page on opening day, 31 October; Okuibuki’s date and its 45 snowmaking machines are from its own announcements. All dates are plans and can move.
November snowfall is the total for 1–30 November at each ski area’s coordinates, from the ERA5 reanalysis through the Open-Meteo Historical Weather API, summed on Japan time for the twelve Novembers from 2014 to 2025. January is the average of the twelve Januaries that followed. The figures for 1–9 November 2026 come from the same source. We counted the 357 Japanese ski areas listed on this site; closed ski areas are left out.
The model under-reads mountain snow, by about 40% on average against Japan Meteorological Agency stations and by more in Hokkaido. It also places each ski area at the height of its grid point, not of its lifts. We left four ski areas out of the resort table where that gap is about 300 m or more, and it is the reason to compare a place with itself (November against January, this year against its average) rather than one region’s centimetres with another’s.
Snowfall is not snow depth. A ski area can have had 30 cm in November and bare ground on the 30th.
Sources: Open-Meteo historical weather data (ERA5 reanalysis, Copernicus Climate Change Service); Snow Park Yeti; Karuizawa Prince Hotel Ski Resort; Gransnow Okuibuki; Niseko United lift tickets; each resort’s own site for its opening date.
Questions
Can you ski in Japan in November?
Yes, but in few places. By 11 November 2026 two ski areas had opened, both on machine-made snow: Snow Park Yeti on Mount Fuji (since 23 October) and Karuizawa Prince (since 31 October). Seventeen more have announced an opening by 30 November, most of them on 28 November, and several open only part of the mountain.
Does it snow in Japan in November?
In the mountains of Hokkaido, yes. Across twelve Novembers, the typical Hokkaido ski area in our figures gets 23 cm of snowfall in the month, about two-fifths of its January. In Nagano and Niigata the typical figure is 12 cm, about an eighth of January, and in the rest of Honshu and the west it is 4 cm.
Is there snow in Niseko in November?
Usually some, rarely enough to count on. At Niseko Moiwa, where our model sits close to mid-mountain height, November has averaged 33 cm over twelve years, ranging from 8 cm in 2014 to 90 cm in 2017. Niseko's lifts are due to open on 28 November 2026.
Where is the most reliable November snow in Japan?
Of the ski areas that open in November, Sapporo Kokusai. It has averaged 56 cm in November and had 30 cm or more in eleven of the last twelve. It plans to open on 20 November 2026.
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