The calendar hasn't even reached Halloween and the leaves have yet to turn their most beautiful crimson and orange colors in Kyoto or Tokyo but for winter sports enthusiasts, enjoying the peak of autumn can wait. As usual, the earliest skiing of the season happened before Halloween this year at the humorously named Yeti Winter Resort situated at the second station of Mount Fuji.

The Yeti Winter Resort offers skiers and snowboarders who join them on the opening day free access to their slopes under one condition: they need to come in cosplay.

So, on October 19th, the slopes and the ski lifts were packed with a very colorful crowd.

Jostling for a place at the starting line where classic characters like Black Jack, Porco Rosso and a Shocker Combatman from Kamen Rider, as well as more recently popular characters like Snow Miku, Kashima from Kancolle and Ren from Gun Gale Online, to name a few. Otaku skiers showed off their anime-print snowboards and skis for the cameras.

Yeti Winter Resort has been the earliest in Japan to open its slopes for 20 consecutive years.

Sankei News was on hand to capture all the fun at Yeti Winter Resort that day:

If you'd like to know more about Yeti Winter Resort, see their website here.

Incidentally, you'll be seeing more cosplaying in the Mount Fuji area soon enough, when the Mount Fuji Cosplay World Conference takes place on November 17th and 18th.