We met a lovely Japanese fellow in New Zealand who raved about Piyashiri and said it had the best powder skiing in Japan, so we had pretty high expectations for this place. And perhaps we’d anticipated Piyashiri too highly because whilst it is up there as a good ski area for powder skiing, it wasn’t mind blowing! The snow quality was very good but it wasn’t excellent as we’d expected it to be, because the aspect was having a small effect (we weren’t there during Japanuary). And it was towards the end of our trip and maybe we’d been overly spoilt with superb powder skiing elsewhere!

We had a mighty fun day exploring the sidecountry on both sides of the ski area and had no problems finding fresh lines. We’d heard that the ski patrollers could be whistle blowing Nazis, and whilst we weren’t heading out of bounds overtly, we didn’t see any ski patrollers. Their repugnance towards sidecountry skiing was evident though, with extensive ropes along the boundaries to discourage you from entering areas that weren’t actually that unsafe. Meanwhile there were some cliffs inside the resort boundaries and they didn’t bother to rope those off!!

We stopped in at the Sun Pillar Hotel for an onsen. It’s not often you find it in Japan, but we got a slight feeling that we weren’t that welcome. Also quite strange for Japan, the onsen water was slightly chlorinated.

We stayed at Hotel Mystays in Nayoro. It’s a clean and comfortable hotel, and within walking distance of various restaurants. We enjoyed staying in this town knowing that we were blissfully a long way from the westernised mainstream ski resorts.

You can see more on our thoughts on the pros and cons on the Nayoro Piyashiri overview page.
See our video here

Great little resort, some fun runs but beware, despite the area promoting itself as having some of the best fresh powder in Japan (which I believe it does) the ski patrol are super quick to tell you "Only groomed runs aloud" "No off piste permitted" WTF, the powder was why we went there, I can do groomed runs any where. The lifties radio to the ski patrol to let them know where you are, there is no hiding.
Even if you don't duck ropes they will stop you touching the fresh.
We left after just one day and won't be going back.
See our video here

Made the trip from Asahikawa to Nayoro in search of pow. Very excited going up the lift with untouched pow through all of the trees. Finally got to the top of the mountain to be welcomed by ski patrol coming out of the lift hut with crossed arms telling us no off piste skiing allowed. We hadn't even had our first run. Saw one poor kiwi guy chased through the trees by screaming ski patrol. They ripped his pass off his arm and tore his ticket in half on the spot. Bumped into him later on in the cafe, he had been there 3 days and it was his first run through the trees. By early afternoon we were the only gaijin left on the mountain and had angry ski patrol following us on every run. They must have had some prior issues to be so hostile towards foreigners. Do not go here looking for off piste action
See our video here