I visited Shizukuishi with a group of family and friends in late Jan. Stayed at the Prince hotel with breakfast, dinner and lift passes for a really reasonable price. The hotel runs a regular bus to Morioka so transfer was really easy. Not much English spoken at all in the area which is kind of a fun part of travelling anyway. The hotel was definitely busier on the weekends than midweek, obviously the resort was the same. Was never any lift lines or fighting for fresh snow. The resort leaves a lot of the steeper pitched areas ungroomed, so that can be heaps of fun. The snow quality was great during our visit. The runs were a lot of fun but quickly become a bit repetitive. If you are keen to explore and have adventurous friends and the gear I think you could have an awesome 3-5 days.
I did the cat tour but really it is no longer worth it, the pitch of the run is very mild and I only got 1 run for 10,000 yen ($110 AUD for one lap). The first tracks wasn't available while we were there and the dawn Cat Tour to the top of the resort for the sunrise was also only available on 3 or 4 set days of the year. None were days we were there and at 10,000 yen again just for a Cat to the top of the resort I doubt we would have done it anyway.
Night skiing was also cancelled for the whole 22/23 season too. Something we didn't see advertised anywhere when booking our trip but was updated the week before we got there. The night ski area was setup and running one night but after grabbing all our gear we were informed it was only for the 3 people doing slalom practice on one very small section of the night run, a few of their friends (or maybe staff) were doing casual snowboard laps at the same time though so it was pretty disappointing.
Food on the mountain is limited to the Alyeska near the cable car offload area serving common Japanese resort food at fairly standard prices (apart from the beer which was a bit higher), plus the Ramen kitchen at the cable car base (only 0% beer at the Ramen kitchen). The hotel also had a pretty decent lunch menu in their restaurant.
The Onsen is definitely a good one. The hotel is very clean and the staff are really helpful. No Yamazaki or 7/11 on site or anywhere near the hotel so stock up on snacks from Morioka. The resort just seems to be struggling a bit, some facilities were shut and others were very expensive. If you can travel light and swing in for a few days of just hitting the good snow as much as you can then I think it would be a killer spot, but it's not a group holiday spot.
I ticked to recommend it but also ticked that I probably won't revisit. The snow quality is definitely the star. The tree areas are getting a bit tight with a lot of smaller trees now tall enough to fill most of the gaps, so the trees are still a lot of fun but a bit restricted in the areas that work well. The expense of some things and the closed facilities are why I would choose elsewhere if travelling with a family group again.
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We visited during an uncharacteristically poor snow season and there was not a lot of snow so we called it Shizubushy on that particular day. It was still a bit of fun, although it required some experience in negotiating bushes. Since our last visit the resort seems to have relaxed a fraction regarding tree skiing, but a patroller was doing some whistle blowing when he thought we were going to drop a lift line.

Lift lines were completely absent but meanwhile the Alyeska cafeteria was really busy and there was a very long queue to purchase lunch.

The main reason we were at Shizukuishi was for the cat skiing as part of a Tohoku Storm Chaser Tour and you can see our review of the Shizukuishi Cat Skiing here.
See our video here

Shizukuishi was my 1st stop on a tohoku tour staying at the Prince hotel. The hotel provided pick up from the train station (pre arranged) and I arrived at around 12 to be allowed straight into my room and get changed and was on mountain by 12-15. Fresh snow had fallen so I spent my 1 st afternoon just lapping the top lift in the trees to the skiers right . On the 2nd day I had booked onto the cat ski (7000 yen - 3 runs) which is more of a gimmick. They use an old ski run which has had the lift removed and is guided !! it took about 3 hrs to do 3 runs as the cat runs at set times (15min cat up 10min ski down 35 minute wait till next cat up- get the picture). While the mountain provides some fun terrain there is a really flat section in the middle which is annoyingly slow with fresh snow. it was reasonably busy in the mid section where the beginner slopes are but no queues anywhere else on the mountain and plenty of places to get into the trees. I will return here at somepoint but probably not stop at the prince hotel .
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Just a one day visit to Shizukuishi this time (we stayed at the Amihari Onsen Hotel) and it was a mighty fun time! We started with a one-run cat skiing experience which was OK except that the snow had gone sour due to the solar aspect, and we weren’t allowed to head into the trees where the snow would have been better. We’d happily recommend the cat skiing run if there’s fresh snow and you can get on the first run, as it’s not expensive and could provide 800m+ of vertical powder. Or there is now a guided tour that incorporates the cat skiing which would be even better because you can head off-piste.

We then hit the ski resort for some groomers and this resort is pretty good for intermediates who want to stay on-piste. Of course, we wanted to get off-piste reasonably quickly and had a good play in the tree zones in-bounds (discretely), above the ski resort, and in the sidecountry, and we didn’t come across any whistle-happy ski patrollers. Despite a lack of recent fresh snow and some warm temps, we found some gorgeous snow that was dreamy creamy in some fabulous trees on a NE aspect. We could rate Shizukuishi Resort as one of the best ski resorts in Japan for tree skiing, but it's officially not allowed so there goes that idea!

We headed into Shizukuishi town a couple of nights for dinner. The town has lots of yakiniku (Korean BBQ) restaurants which were great for a meat fest!

You can see how we rate Shizukuishi versus other ski resorts on the Japanese ski resorts ratings page.
See our video here

We had pretty low expectations of the Shizukuishi ski resort. It sounded as though it was pretty dinky and more suited to terminal intermediates than powder hounds, however we were very pleasantly surprised. Like many other resorts in northern Honshu, there’s probably only enough terrain to keep a powder hound entertained for a day or two. We had lots of fun in the off-piste trees, and the side-country to the skiers’ left was amazing with super long lines that drop into little gullies. Just don’t make the long lines too long - traverse out before you end up down next to the cliff lined creek! The snow conditions when we visited were superb.

We spent a couple of nights at the Prince Hotel on our expedition around northern Honshu. It was somewhat typical of a Prince Hotel; upscale and nice, but with too much grey paint and a little dated. The internet access was also indicative that the hotel hasn’t quite kept up with the times, with dodgy internet that was only available in the lobby where there was no where to sit. The buffet meals in the large restaurant were of reasonable quality, although the quantity of food was very depleted. Nevertheless it’s a very good hotel and the twin rooms were very comfortable. The onsen was just gorgeous and it was so serene relaxing in the hot spring whilst looking out across the pond and watching the fish swim about.

To get a feel for what we thought of the resort, check out the pros and cons on the main page.
See our video here