Hi — I’m Tabiiku. I travel around Japan with my daughter on the principle that experience is the best thing you can give a child. This one is Zao Onsen in Yamagata: skiing among the famous snow monsters, staying at Zao Kokusai Hotel.
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Skiing at Zao Onsen
Start by collecting the rental kit you arranged through the hotel. If you book in advance they have the whole set waiting for you in a locker, which makes the morning painless — but you need to book at least three days ahead, so do it early.
Boots on, skis in hand, we opened the door full of anticipation — onto a road. The slopes are a three to five minute walk from there. We have become far too used to hotels where the piste is directly outside, and carrying skis on foot felt like a real inconvenience.
We then tried to buy lift passes at the hotel and found they were cash only and that children’s passes could not be bought there at all, so we had to go to the ticket centre anyway. That is worth fixing.
Zao Kokusai Hotel sits near the Zao Sanroku base station, so we bought passes at the counter there and took the ropeway up. The ropeway loads in large batches but has limited capacity and infrequent departures, so it gets busy — an operational problem more than anything. We were lucky and waited only a few minutes, but apparently there are days in peak season with five-hour queues, so plan accordingly. You can also go up by chairlift instead, but the lift connections are so poor that this takes an age too.
To give you a sense of it: getting to one particular point meant skiing 23 to 26 to 27, down towards Kurohime, then 39 and down again — around thirty minutes. Zao is genuinely notorious for badly connected lifts. The transfers between 20 and 17, and between 16 and 17, are the worst: both involve a gentle uphill, and plenty of people simply take their skis off and walk.
The scale of the mountain and the variety of runs, though, are exactly what Zao’s reputation says. Working across from the Yokokura and Kurohime area along the connecting run to Uwanodai, taking the Sky Cable to the Central slopes, then back to Yokokura — three hours disappear without you noticing. If you like trying different terrain and different views, it is a very rewarding mountain.
And the juhyo — the snow monsters — are as spectacular as everyone says. February is the season and March is often too late, but we went in mid-March and were lucky enough to see them. The best place to see them close up is lift 22: riding up with them on both sides is genuinely moving. If you are going in snow monster season, make sure you take lift 22.
One caution: in mid-March the snow was not the powder I had hoped for, and in places it was hard, icy and frankly frightening. The Hyakumannin slope was in the worst condition, so take care there.
The hotel
The building is not new, but it is well kept, and the staff were consistently thoughtful and pleasant. The lounge has snacks, drinks and ice cream available (closed during some hours) — nothing lavish, but being able to have an ice cream after the bath or a coffee while you wait was a lovely touch.
We stayed in a deluxe suite. The interior had only just been renovated and was beautiful, and I liked having the living room and bedroom separate. There is a bathtub in the room, but the onsen is far better — please use it.
The food
Dinner comfortably exceeded my expectations, to the point of surprise. The service was excellent too: a member of staff found the peach juice my daughter loves even though it was not on the menu, and the timing of each course was carefully judged. The assorted starters and the sashimi were all very good, and the cooking generally lets good ingredients speak. The Yamagata beef cooked on a ceramic plate was unforgettable — I still think about it. The portions were so generous that we never made it to dessert, and they wrapped it up for us to take away, which was again exactly the right instinct.
Breakfast the next morning is a buffet, with plenty of Yamagata specialities like Yamagata beef croquettes and tama konnyaku. My daughter became very attached to the tama konnyaku.
It is a long way from Tokyo, and it is not a fancy hotel — but for what it costs I was very satisfied. And the snow monsters are worth seeing once in your life.
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