[GoNative]

The point about Japanese being risk adverse is something that we have found very frustrating at the ski resort I work at. There's also been a great resistance to changing the way things are done which is part of not wanting to take risks I guess. To put things in perspective the Japanese ski industry has been in continual decline since the bubble burst all those years ago. The numbers of Japanese skiing are declining at a rate of around 10% per year. I put this down to a couple of things.

Firstly, obviously the economy has not been doing that well and peoples disposable income is not growing, if anything it has been declining so somewhat expensive sports like skiing suffer.

Secondly I think it's also that ski resorts in this country have changed very little in the way they are managed and run since the '80's. The sport itself though has changed dramatically over the last 20 years with the increasing popularity of snowboarding and ski shapes changing from long, skinny skis for skiing on-piste to shorter, fat skis for skiing all mountain off-piste and in parks. Japanese resorts though seem not to have realised this with few allowing access to off-piste terrain or building parks that are all that fun. This is the mainstay of most successful resorts around the world today. I feel their inability to keep up with the times has meant they've lost the interest of new generations of skiers and boarders out there. They just aren't providing the right product. But getting them to consider changing the way they do things is near impossible.

Here in Niseko over the last 10 years there has been massive foreign investment into property development and two of the 4 ski areas have been bought out by international companies, one from Hong Kong and the other Malaysia. 10's of thousands of foreigners now come to the resort each winter and it's probably one of the few resorts in Japan that has seen increasing revenue. The missed opportunties though of the Japanese company that owns the Hirafu area of the mountain (the most popular with international visitors) are just too many to list. After years of declining skier numbers suddenly there's this massive exponential increase of skiers from a brand new market and the company did virtually nothing at all to take advantage of it. They still have not hired any foreigner in any manaement position who has experience in management from a successful international resort that could have assisted them in profiting from the foreign influx. Most of the new businesses that have sprung up to service this new market are foreign owned.

I just think it's been a real shame that so few Japanese companies have taken advantage of the boom that's occurred at this resort (some construction companies have done quite well out of it) but they've no one but themselves to blame. They've done so little to change they way they do things to take advantage of this very lucrative new market. So far it's foreign owned companies that have taken advantage of most of the opportunities. The Japanese adversity to change and taking risks is mostly to blame from what I can see.