A Singapore Fund Is Spending ¥200 Billion on Myoko. We Measured What It Bought.

Two of the ski areas in the Myoko valley have changed hands in the last four years, and both went to the same buyer.

Madarao Kogen was sold by Abira Corporation to Patience Capital Group on 1 November 2022. Myoko Suginohara followed on 9 November 2023, sold by Seibu Holdings, with Seibu staying on to run it (Bloomberg; Ski Bumps Labo, 12 November 2023). Neither price was disclosed.

Who they are

Patience Capital Group was founded in 2019 and works from Singapore and Tokyo. Its founder and chief executive, Ken Chan, previously ran the Japan business of GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund; the firm says its senior team has managed more than USD 25 billion in assets (PCG). It runs two vehicles, the Japan Tourism Fund and a residential fund.

Chan has put a number on the plan: roughly ¥200 billion (about USD 1.4 billion) over about ten years, with some USD 500 million in the first three to four, to turn Myoko Kogen into a resort spoken of alongside Aspen, Whistler and St Moritz — luxury hotels, housing for the thousands of staff such a resort needs, and a retail street (Patience Realty, 13 October 2023).

The first concrete piece is at Myoko Suginohara: a first phase of about ¥70 billion, with two hotel buildings and shops, reported to open in December 2028. The luxury hotel is to carry the Six Senses brand, run by IHG, with Kengo Kuma among the designers, at a reported 57 rooms and 21 residences (Nikkei, Niigata Nippo, Joetsu Town Journal). Plans of this size move, so read the dates and amounts as reported intentions.

That is the pitch. Here is the mountain.

On snow volume, they bought better than Niseko

Ski area	Season snowfall	World rank (of 3,069)	Rank in Japan (of 397)
Seki Onsen (same valley, not PCG)	689 cm	19	14
Akakura Kanko	445 cm	=117	56
Madarao (PCG)	432 cm	=129	64
Myoko Suginohara (PCG)	357 cm	=268	101
Niseko Grand Hirafu	289 cm	=526	160

Madarao gets 50% more snow than Niseko Grand Hirafu, and the valley contains the 19th-snowiest ski area on earth, 13 km up the road. If the thesis is “the next Niseko,” the raw material is not in question.

The two hills they own are opposites

	Madarao	Myoko Suginohara
Season snowfall	432 cm	357 cm
Worst of 12 winters	230 cm	230 cm
Year-to-year variation	19%	15%
Base elevation	918 m	739 m
Vertical	421 m	1,118 m
Runs / pisted length	35 / 15.4 km	22 / 21.4 km
Snow quality rank in Japan	64	48
Days with rain in winter	16.5%	11.5%

Madarao is the high-based tree-run hill with little vertical. Suginohara is one of the longest lift-served descents in Japan — 1,118 m of vertical, more than Hakuba Happo-One’s 1,071 m, with a lower, warmer base. On our measures Suginohara also has the better snow — colder on snow days, rain on fewer of them, 48th for quality against Madarao’s 64th. Owning both, PCG has tree runs and scale in one valley, 13 km apart. That combination is rare in Japan, and it is a more coherent purchase than either hill looks on its own.

The catch nobody in the press releases mentions

	Days with rain in winter	Mean temperature on snow days
Niseko Grand Hirafu	6.9%	−6.2°C
Myoko Suginohara	11.5%	−4.4°C
Madarao	16.5%	−4.2°C
Hakuba Happo-One	22.0%	−4.1°C
Nozawa Onsen	36.5%	−4.0°C

Myoko gets far more snow than Niseko, and it also gets rain that Niseko does not: one winter day in nine at Suginohara, one in six at Madarao, against one in fourteen at Hirafu. This is the trade the whole of Honshu makes — more snow, warmer, wetter at the bottom, and it is why Niseko became what it is despite ranking 526th in the world for snowfall.

A ¥200 billion resort aimed at the people who currently fly to Niseko will be judged on the days it rains at the base, not on the season total. The most expensive part of that plan may turn out to be elevation: Suginohara’s top station is at 1,857 m, and the money is being spent at the bottom.

What the money is actually buying

The snow in this valley is not new. What it has never had is beds.

Ski area	World rank	Season snowfall	Places to stay within 12 km
Charmant Hiuchi	18	690 cm	3
Seki Onsen	19	689 cm	2
ARAI Snow Resort	24	663 cm	1
Akakura Onsen	=117	445 cm	31
Madarao Kogen	=129	432 cm	26
Myoko Suginohara	=268	357 cm	19

Niseko Grand Hirafu has 431 within the same distance. The ¥200 billion is not buying snow. It is buying places to sleep next to snow that is already there. For a skier, the useful outcome is somewhere comfortable to stay within reach of hills like Seki Onsen and ARAI, which have never had that. Nothing about a hotel at Suginohara puts lift queues on them.

What exists right now

Nothing in the plan changes a trip before winter 2028/29. The valley works today without it. Akakura Onsen, a hot spring town with its ski area attached, is the practical base. Nagano is about 90 minutes from Tokyo by shinkansen, and Myoko is a local train or bus from there.

Myoko is our Myoko and Joetsu area page — 10 ski areas, of which five have official live cameras, with today’s snow at each. Suginohara’s adult day ticket was ¥8,000 last season; this season’s price is not published yet. Seki Onsen, the 19th-snowiest ski area on earth, runs two chairlifts and a single marked run.

How this was measured

Snowfall is the December–March total at each ski area’s coordinates from ERA5 reanalysis (Open-Meteo Historical Weather API), averaged over the 12 winters from 2014/15 to 2025/26, on the same method for all 3,069 ski areas on this site. Rain-day share and mean temperature on snow days come from the ERA5 reanalysis, corrected to each ski area’s mid-elevation, and the snow-quality rank is our own measure across 397 Japanese ski areas. Runs, lifts and elevations are from OpenSkiMap (OpenStreetMap, ODbL). Ownership, dates and investment figures are as reported by the sources linked above. Places to stay are those mapped on OpenStreetMap within 12 km of each ski area, each counted once for the ski area it is nearest to; rural inns are often unmapped, so the small numbers are probably low, but not by enough to close a gap of 2 against 431.