An amazing video from Black Crows featuring an intriguing insight into the old bubble-era ski resorts of Japan that now lie empty of people but covered in snow.
Third part of Black Crows' series on ghost resorts with Japan as the exploration ground for crows Celeste Pomerantz and Daisuke Fukasawa.
Fresh snow, just in from the Pacific Ocean. No one around. An atmosphere flirting with the great masters of Japanese photography. It could be black and white. Small trees spaced just right to be bypassed. The cry of a crow. Deep in the mountains of the Kansai region, on the main island of Honshu, Celeste and Daisuke explore places frozen in the 1990s. Alone on slopes deserted by skiers, they take advantage of exceptional snow where, just a few years earlier, a whole life was organized around ski lifts now in disrepair.
Japan is a great skiing country. Its powder is considered one of the lightest and most abundant in the world. After some strange years that witnessed a multitude of bankruptcies - obviously the subject of this third chapter - Japanese skiing has regained its former glory and can now look back on the past with the confidence of a country rooted in a centenarian ski culture. Interviews with three protagonists of the Nippon ski scene shed light on the latest developments. The frenzy of archive images contrasts with the delicacy of the mountains' new-found silence.
Romantic nostalgia sets in. Mystery rises. Tea shall wait.
