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. LOTTE ARAI RESORT in Myoko Kogen is the closest thing I have found in Japan to backcountry skiing inside a lift-served resort — and it works surprisingly well with a family.
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Skiing
Arai is known for enormous snowfall and genuinely good powder. Around eighty per cent of the terrain is ungroomed, and it won Japan’s Best Ski Resort at the World Ski Awards in 2020.
Beginners can start on the Pony course. For stronger skiers there is the Myoko Long Run and the Roppongi course, a roughly 3,500m run with wonderful views.
There is a queue at the lifts first thing in the morning, but by the afternoon you can more or less walk on.
A note for international visitors: there are a great many overseas skiers here, and more than half the staff are non-Japanese — but Japanese is widely spoken too, so you will be fine either way. This is one of the easier resorts in Japan to navigate in English.
Everything else
The pool is in the same building as the onsen, so you can walk between them in your swimsuit. The water temperature was improved for the 2026 season and it is much more comfortable now. There is an open-air bath too. Between about 5:30pm and 7:30pm it gets busy, so plan around that.
The Playground costs 2,200 yen for fifty minutes and gives you unlimited use of the Fun Wall, the bouldering and the trampolines. We had it more or less to ourselves. The bouldering routes are proper ones, and there is a set aimed at adults.
The rooms
I would choose the LODGE, CLUB or NEST wings over the ARAI wing. The reason: in the ARAI wing some rooms sit on both sides of the corridor that leads to the onsen, and I suspect you can end up in one where the noise carries until late at night.
The LODGE, CLUB and NEST wings are quiet and comfortable, with a warm timber feel closer to the US East Coast or Europe than to a Japanese resort. If a coach party is checking in at the same time as you, expect a wait.
Food
There is a lot of choice: a Western buffet, a Japanese buffet, a steakhouse, Vietnamese, a bakery. The buffet standard is high — several dishes would not have been out of place on a set menu.
The steakhouse was more mixed. The clam chowder that comes with the set was the best thing on the table; the salad and bread were ordinary, and the steak itself was the problem.
Breakfast is a choice of Japanese, Western or bakery. The freshly made tofu and the oyakodon were particular favourites.
The food court at the base of the slopes runs on app ordering and payment, which is well suited to international visitors, with a wide menu — curry, ramen, salads and more.
If you want deep snow and difficult terrain but still need a resort that works with a child, Arai is a rare combination. We will be back.
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