In How to Pick the Right Ski School in Niseko for You, I said the first thing to ask about any instructor is how many seasons they have taught. I stand by that. But after 34 seasons of teaching, and many years of training and examining other instructors, I have learned that the number on its own can mislead you.

This article is about what sits behind it: how instructors are trained, how they are paid, and how we do it at Far East Snowsports.

Experience is not the same as progress

Think about driving. Picture someone in your family who has been driving for over 30 years. They have never taken a lesson or any training since the day they passed their test, and they still drive exactly as they did then. Thirty years of experience, but not thirty years of progress.

Instructors are the same. Experience is a must. Seasons on snow are a really important number, and you should always ask for it. But experience is not the whole story. What makes the difference is experience combined with intentional training: an instructor who keeps working to get better, season after season, at a school that invests in them. Without that, an instructor can teach for twenty years and simply repeat their first season twenty times.

Where your lesson money goes

Here is something most guests never think about: how much of what you pay for a lesson reaches the person teaching you. In my experience across schools in New Zealand, Europe and Japan, instructors usually receive 20 to 30% of the lesson price. I have seen anything from 15% to 50%, depending on the instructor’s qualification and seasons of experience.

Why should that matter to you? Because instructors who cannot make a living leave. When a school treats teaching as seasonal work, it loses its best people every spring and starts again every winter. We built Far East Snowsports on the opposite idea: that teaching snowsports is a real career, and the school is run so that it can be one. That is why our instructors come back season after season, and why many of our guests come back to the same instructor year after year.

We are not the only ones. Several other schools in Niseko look after their instructors well, and you can see it in how many of their people return each winter. Whichever school you consider, ask how long its instructors have been there. It tells you a lot.

Why a school’s training matters more than who it hires

Many schools hire highly qualified, highly experienced instructors. That sounds like the answer, and on paper it is.

The problem shows up when you book more than one instructor. Experienced instructors arrive from different countries and systems, each with their own way of teaching. If the school never trains them into one shared approach, two instructors from the same school can teach in completely different ways. A family split across two or three instructors can end the day with three very different experiences.

How we develop instructors at Far East Snowsports

At Far East Snowsports we hire for potential as much as experience, and then we develop people. Our team includes highly experienced instructors and instructors earlier in their careers. Everyone trains to the same approach through our in-season training system and our mentor.

We also have two membership tiers: Junior Members and Full Members. Every season, we split everyone into small groups that mix the two. Full Members pass on their knowledge and experience: how to teach, where to take guests, and everything they have learned over many seasons. Junior Members learn directly from them, in a group small enough that the learning actually happens.

It works in both directions. Teaching others is one of the best ways to sharpen your own skills, so the Full Members grow too. What we are building is a positive spiral, where each instructor’s development feeds everyone else’s. It also means the way we teach is handed down from instructor to instructor, not reinvented by each new hire.

For you, the result is simple: whichever of our instructors you spend the day with, you get the same standard.

How Far East got here

Far East Snowsports started in Niseko in 2015 as a two-person snowsports school. This season we have 21 instructors: Japanese instructors, including Hokkaido locals who grew up on this snow, alongside international instructors from around the world.

Everything we do comes back to one purpose: for all of us to be able to enjoy snowsports for the next 100 years, and beyond. That purpose comes down to four missions:

• This Is Our Real Job. Teaching snowsports should be a career that can carry a person and a household, not just a season.
• For the Snow to Keep Falling. Niseko depends on its snow, and we support work to protect it.
• Contribute to the Community. Niseko is not a backdrop. It is our home, and our work should leave it stronger.
• Develop the Next Generation. None of this lasts unless it can be handed on.

If you are planning a trip, or a career

If you are choosing a school for your trip, start with How to Pick the Right Ski School in Niseko for You. And if this sounds like the kind of lesson you want, whether you ski or snowboard, we would be glad to spend a day on the mountain with you. Book a lesson with Far East Snowsports

If you are an instructor and this way of working appeals to you, we open applications every March. Read more on our recruitment page.