About Secret Ski Map
A map for skiers who travel Japan for more than the runs — the onsen town, the izakaya, the shrine on the ridge, the quiet valley two stops past the famous one. We map ski + food + culture + onsen + akiya across all 417 resorts in Japan, and lean toward the road less travelled.
How it's built — methodology
Everything on the map is computed from named sources, not hand-waved. Where a field is blank it means we don't have the data yet — not that there is nothing there. We never invent numbers.
The scores
- Powder Score — blends JMA snowfall with a snow-reliability read and vertical drop.
- Culture & Onsen Score — nearby onsen + heritage density and a resort's cultural highlights.
Scores are transparent and data-derived. We benchmark our per-resort depth against Powderhounds, skigrade.com and japow.travel — and differentiate on the culture/food/onsen/akiya combination the big sites skip.
Independent & honest
We are not a booking agency. Some accommodation and experience links are affiliate links — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you — but commission never influences which resorts we recommend or how they score. See our affiliate disclosure.
Questions, corrections or a resort we've missed? Get in touch — the map improves when the data does.