Nozawa Onsen

Nozawa Onsen is one of more than 500 ski resorts in Japan. It is located in the Nagano Prefecture in the Japanese Mountains at an altitude between 565 and 1,650 m with a difference of 1,085 m. It is one of the nearest ski resorts to the town of Nagano, the place of the 1998 Winter Olympic Games. Another main feature of Nozawa Onsen ski resort is that, from some point of view, it is the third-biggest and highest resort in Japan with more than 40 km of slopes and more than 15 ski lifts in total after Shigakogen and a series of individual resorts including Happo-One, Niseko United, Myoko Suginohara, Zao Onsen, and Hakuba Iwatake — all of them have more than 50 km of slopes (but the number of lifts is different). The resort is best suitable for easy skiers — most of its slopes are blue. For intermediate and advanced skiing, it offers more than 20 and 10 km of red and black slopes, respectively. The most common type of ski lift is a chairlift. The Nozawa Onsen season is from late November to mid-April in general.