Snow Park Oze Tokura is great to include on a road trip of the Katashina ski resorts and other Gunma ski resorts. It’s largely devoid of powder hounds and is mostly frequented by snowboarders who are there to play in the parks. Once called just “Oze Tokura”, the name changed to “Snow Park Oze Tokura” to reflect its focus on terrain parks, and whilst it still has good park features, unfortunately of late they’ve closed the half pipe.

Oze Tokura Ski Resort is one of those classic Gunma ski resorts where Tokyo-ites swarm the place on the weekend and just stay on Saturday night, and the rest of the time it feels pretty deserted.

Pros and Cons of Snow Park Oze Tokura

Pros

• Oze Tokura is uncrowded, especially on weekdays, and in the off-piste area it feels like you have your own private ski area.
• Some of the tree skiing is really easy to navigate with negligible traversing, or you can explore slightly further afield in the sidecountry.
• Snow Park Oze Tokura has good terrain park hits and sometimes has massive jumps.
• Accommodation and lift tickets are cheap on weekdays.
• The ski area is reasonably protected from the elements.
• There are plenty of onsen soaking opportunities in the area.

Cons

• Oze Tokura is a small ski area so there isn’t a lot of piste variety.
• The top elevation is not as high as some other Gunma ski resorts.
• The lift infrastructure is rather basic.

Pro or Con Depending On Your Perspective

• Day trips from Tokyo are easy via bus, otherwise you’ll want to have a car or be on a multi-resort guided tour because shuttle services and public transport in the region is rudimentary or absent.
• Like neighbouring ski resorts, Tokura is not that close to the coast so the snow doesn’t fall in the same volumes as the high profile Nagano and Niigata ski resorts, yet the snow is usually classic light Gun-powder.
• The region offers the real Japanese experience, so don’t expect a lot of English, westernisation or any nightlife.

Oze Tokura Ski and Snowboard Terrain

Snow Park Oze Tokura isn’t situated on a typical shaped Japanese volcano, but otherwise it’s almost your quintessential Japanese ski resort with cookie cutter statistics. So it’s reasonably small with only 9 courses, 7 lifts, and 340 metres of vertical (1,080 - 1,420m). As is common, there is an equal spread of trails for different abilities with none of the courses being particularly steep.

Oze Tokura has a small but well maintained park that often includes some big kickers.

Oze Tokura has some easy to find off-piste skiing amongst well spaced trees, as well as some off-piste and sidecountry that requires a little more exploration.

See Oze Tokura skiing for more information.

Where is Snow Park Oze Tokura?

Snow Park Oze Tokura is the neighbour of Oze Iwakura Ski Resort in the Oze region of the Katashina Village in Gunma Prefecture. The Oze Tokura Ski Resort is an easy 2 hour drive from Tokyo, being only about 180km northwest of Tokyo.

Oze Tokura Accommodation

The Oze Kogen Hotel sits at the base of the ski resort and offers western, Japanese and combo rooms.

The Oze Park Hotel is just a little way down the road, whilst the Oze Tokura Onsen Village is 2km down the road from the ski resort, offering various ryokans and pensions with onsen baths. There are also other Japanese inns in Katashina.

A good option is to stay at the Oze Iwakura Resort Hotel considering that you may be likely to spend more time over at the Oze Iwakura Ski Resort.

Availability for accommodation is usually very tight on Saturday nights, and if you can find a room, expect to pay much more for it compared to the other nights of the week.

Katashina Accommodation Listings

Ski Resort Facilities

The base lodge is not fancy, but it covers the required facilities and services. Restaurant Oze is a large cafeteria and there’s an adjacent café specialising in crepes, whilst further up the hill is a curry eatery. The snowsports lessons are only conducted in Japanese and feature freestyle park lessons for snowboarders. The base area has a kids’ play park as well as an indoor child care facility.