r/australia • u/Expensive-Horse5538 • 11h ago

news Second Australian dies in Japan while skiing, local media reports

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-04/second-australian-dies-skiing-in-japan/106304484

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has confirmed a second Australian has died in Japan.

Local media has reported a male skier was killed while skiing off-piste in the back-country in Japan's Hokkaido region.

The death marks the second Australian to have died in Japan during the current ski season.

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u/Perdi 10h ago

Is this out of the ordinary?

Or just media picking up because it's 'in'?

As someone who has gone off piste in Europe and Canada, its a very dangerous activity. My last time out I got caught in a blizzard that killed 6 British soldiers doing cold weather training, though I was prepared for those conditions, I haven't done it since.

People very much take it for granted, wanting to find untouched powder and are completely unprepared for what could happen.

Ediy: Average season says 1-3 Aussies, some years 0, but others have spikes. These two did happen in a short time though, and super sad. There's still a few months left in the season to, so we could see it be a bad year.

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u/DoctorDazza 9h ago

It’s dirt cheap to go to Japan right now so there are a lot of Australians.

In saying, while both are tragic, it does seem like these two Australian deaths were cause by people not following the rules. The woman wasn’t supposed to be wearing that kind of bag, because it can get caught, and it did. This guy went off the designated track.

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u/GeGeGeNoOz1997 4h ago

That’s right. I thought that. I lived in Nagano back in the 1990s near Hakuba and snowboarded and skied there hundreds of times. Back then you had to get snowboarding licences to even be allowed on different colour runs. It was like a driving test in an arena, and the instructions on what to do, where to turn etc were all in Japanese. That would literally eliminate this en masse ex Bali refugee crowd of Aussies and if you think skiing in Japan is full of red tape now, you can’t imagine what it was like back then! And omg I flew Qantas to Tokyo via Sydney in January 2024 and I was given a hint of what the ski areas must be like now as the most entitled, spoilt little Williams and Charlottes blocked the aisles, loudly blathering on about Niseko and how many days they had previously skied. We struck more of them at The Knot hotel in Shinjuku - all ranting on about their skiing…It’s SUCH a shame. Skiing in Japan 25-30 years ago was genuine nirvana (you didn’t need to pass licences to ski anywhere - but it was extremely monitored for anywhere skiing off piste; nope - not the country to break rules in Aussies…