Bear spotted at Japan ski resort in latest incident

A ski resort in Japan said Friday it had received reports of bear sightings while a snowboarder described how one of the animals chased him on the piste. A record 13 people have been killed by bears across the country since April, with incidents reported regularly of bears entering homes, roaming near schools and rampaging in supermarkets. “We’ve been patrolling to check if there are bear footprints every day since we received two sighting reports on Sunday,” Kazuya Shirakawa of Hakuba47 Mountain Sports Park in Nagano region told AFP.

Ski resort employees have not seen any sign of bears since the reports, Shirakawa said. Bears normally enter hibernation in winter, but a man was attacked early this month in the region while clearing snow near his home.

Meanwhile, a snowboarder who posted a video on Instagram of his encounter with a bear told media that the animal “chased him” on the ski slope. “When I turned there was a bear. I was surprised,” he told private broadcaster TV Asahi. The video he posted online four days ago showed a bear running towards him from below the course in Nagano.

It was unclear whether the ski resort was the same as where the other bear sightings were reported. “It nearly collided with me… and our eyes met.” The bear gave up and returned to the mountain, he said. “Had I fallen I would have been caught. Had I collided I might have been attacked. It was a close call.” Separately on Friday, Japan picked the kanji character for bear as the symbol for 2025. The public votes in the annual event for the written character they think best represents the past year.

A 53-year-old who voted for the character said: “This year felt like a year when the animals came down into residential areas and ran amok, causing injuries to people, damage to crops and the cancellation of events.” The Japanese government is scrambling to deal with the surge in maulings, which scientists say is being driven by a fast-growing bear population combined with this year’s bad acorn harvest and a falling human population.