Zao Onsen Ski Area蔵王温泉スキー場

Zao Onsen offers a spectacle no other resort can: the juhyō, or snow monsters — whole forests of fir trees so caked in wind-driven rime and snow that they swell into ghostly white giants across the summit. Ski down through them by day, and on winter nights they're floodlit in colour, an eerie, unforgettable slalom through a frozen crowd.

The mountain beneath is big and varied — a ropeway to the monster-covered top, long descents, and terrain that suits cruisers and families as much as the photographers who come just for the juhyō. This is Yamagata, deep in Tōhoku, so the snow is plentiful and the crowds are mostly domestic.

And then there's the town, which has been in the hot-spring business for nine hundred years. Zao's water runs milky and strongly sulphurous — the real, eggy, skin-softening stuff — poured into public baths and rotenburo scattered through an old village of wooden inns. Ski the monsters, then dissolve into the sulphur. Few ski days end better.