I remember a time when you could ask for ski advice on Newschoolers and the responses would, for the most part,be helpful and make the decision-making process easier. Well I'm afraid that time is well and truly gone: A guy asks for advice on powder skis and his thread is defaced by an idiot telling him never to go to Japan because he will single-hanedly destroy the culture of a nation. Almost everyone else suggests a random selection of powder skis that bare little relevance to the threadmaker's needs and finally somebody suggests Volkl Katanas and Atomic Punx in the same sentence....
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
If you don't know what the fuck you are talking about, don't post- you are merely wasting space, wasting your and the threadmaker's time and confusing the process even further. Thank you.
Now, to the question:
1] What use will the skis get afer your japan trip? It would be rediculous to buy huge pow skis for a couple of weeks in Japan only for them to be consigned to the closet gathering dust for the rest of their lives. Unless of course you'll be spending several weeks in Japan in which case the skis will be worth it for the trip alone.
2] Japan is almost entirely tree skiing so you won't need anything with too straight of a sidecut, neither will you need anything very stiff.
3] What is your budget? if you have plenty of cash to spend, check out independent manufacturers like Praxis, DP Skis, Birdos,PM Gear etc. These are the holy grail of pow skis and typically you can buy almost any camber/rocker configuration from these guys. They tend to be a bit more $$$ but the build quality is far superior to mainstream brands, as is the performance.
If however you want to buy off the shelf, then off the top of my head:
Atomic Big Daddy 193
Atomic Thug 191
Salomon Rocker 192
Volkl Sumo 190
Volkl Katana 190/197 (durability issues)
Armada ARG 185
Line Prophet 130 186
These could all work but without further details as to what you want then a decent recommendation is impossible
