We’d dismissed Oze Tokura as a naff low elevation ski resort on our previous visit to Katashina, so we’d neglected to visit Tokura other than to look at it from the car park. We thought we’d give it a go this time around, but considering it was such an uncharacteristically bad snow season we had low expectations for getting off-piste. When we walked up from the car park and saw a major building half fallen down, we really wondered what we’d got ourselves in for! Luckily for us, we left absolutely stoked from our day filled with fresh powder lines.

It was a weekend and a couple of the runs were a bit congested with happy snowboarders that hadn’t progressed enough to learn about peripheral awareness. Meanwhile there was absolutely no one riding the off-piste. Maybe this was because it’s totally taboo and a few fence lines seemed to suggest this, but other areas had zero fences and even though we were being discrete, no one approached us regarding our off-piste ways. It also seemed that they’d done some glading in areas because stumps were poking through the lean base, and you don’t glade trees if you don’t want people to enjoy them!

We had so much fun in the trees without any competition for the freshies, and whilst the snow wasn’t deep, either the top fluff or the base for that matter which was about 1m, the snow quality was quite lovely.

Even though it’s common in Japan for the contradiction of risk aversion and simultaneously having some questionable approaches to safety, Oze Tokura seems to have weighted the scales to the latter. Most Japanese ski resorts won’t open a run until absolutely every twig is covered up, yet Oze Tokura had just opened an advanced run that had little stumps all over it that were like spears and ridiculously dangerous. The positioning of some of the terrain park features was also hazardous and we were surprised there weren’t more collisions. And then there’s the dilapidated building at the base sitting right next to the kids’ snow park. It makes you laugh!

We wouldn’t recommend Oze Tokura as a ski resort for powder hounds to visit in its own right, because there’s not enough terrain variety for multiple days of entertainment. However it’s a great adjunct for a multi-day trip with the amazing Oze Iwakura and other nearby ski resorts (but forget Marunuma Kogen!). Oze Tokura is a great way to score unadulterated lines of powder, unless of course the temps have rise and the low elevation becomes a problem.

You can see our thoughts on the pros and cons on the Oze Tokura overview page and see how we score it on the Japanese ski resort ratings.
See our video here