Hokkaido

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I’d always wanted to see a bear in the wild. I’ve been very fortunate in seeing many other big wild beasts around the world, a tiger in India, gorillas in Uganda, lions, elephants, leopards, hippos, giraffes, rhinos etc around Africa, and some big underwater stuff like whales, whalesharks and manta rays, but I hadn’t seen a bear. Until Hokkaido where we saw three!



Our contracts at Kyushu University restricted how many days per year we could spend outside of Japan. Therefore, Magdalena bought me for my birthday in February a trip to Hokkaido in July. This was fortunate because with the coronavirus situation we couldn’t go abroad anyway. It was even more fortunate because Hokkaido is fantastic.



The northern island of Hokkaido comprises 22% of Japan (it’s about the size of Ireland) but contains less than 5% of Japan’s population. It is perhaps best known as a winter ski/snowboard destination receiving famously deep and reliable powder as frigid winds blowing from Siberia to the north meet moist air from the south. Even the sea freezes over in the winter. Hokkaido is the least developed of Japan’s major islands with a lot of national parks and even areas of wilderness, which surprised me for a country as famously crowded as Japan. If you want to hike in these areas it is a short summer season, only June to September. We visited in late July 2020 and there was still a lot of snow in the mountains. But this is a good thing if you want to camp up there as we did. When the snow has all melted the streams dry up and you don’t have any water.



We rented a car for our 11-day tour, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, public transport is infrequent aside from between towns, and national parks aren’t very accessible by bus. Secondly, Hokkaido’s weather is very changeable so a car would allow us to chase the sunny spots. Upon arrival at the car hire office, due to a shortage of the tiny car that we had ordered, we were upgraded for free into a big Nissan hydrid 4x4. It was daunting at first after only driving the little cuboid Daihatsus and Subarus since arriving in Japan but ultimately very comfortable. The boot was big enough to dry our tent when we had to pack up on moist mornings. I will note that car hire in Japan was generally a pleasure. This is worth pointing out because almost anywhere else in the world I find car rental a time-consuming and aggravating experience with companies conning you out of extras you weren’t aware of when booking and trying anything to not give you your deposit back. Not in Japan.



We spent the first night in Sapporo to stock up on hiking and camping food, buy gas for our stove, and unintentionally stock ourselves up on masses of meat and beer. We visited the Sapporo brewery, not for a tour of the factory, but to partake in a “Genghis Khan”. Several of the old brewery halls have been converted into restaurants serving the all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink Mongolian barbecue. Each table has its own dome-shaped grill, paper aprons, and an iPad for you to order whatever you want for the next two hours. The grill is supposed to resemble a Mongol warrior’s battle helmet upon which they apparently cooked, hence a “Genghis Khan”. The meat is mostly lamb and mutton, neither very common in Japan, with occasional grilled cabbage and onions, washed down with pints of every type of Sapporo beer. We definitely got our money’s worth as we didn’t need anything else to eat for the rest of the day nor much of the next.



We went straight to Daisetsuzan National Park, Hokkaido’s largest national park – bigger than some Japanese prefectures – and home to its highest mountains. There are a few paths that cross the mountainous expanse though it is mostly unspoiled wilderness. Our planned three-day traverse started inauspiciously at the national park office in Sounkyo Onsen when we were told by the overwhelmingly friendly and excitable park ranger that our planned camping spot was closed. The national park service had taken the opportunity to renovate some of the mountain huts during the quiet enforced by covid and the construction workers huts were occupying the campground. Wild camping is not permitted to preserve the wilderness and for safety in numbers – there are a lot of bears here. Our route was replanned and we jumped on the cable car to start the trek. The cable car and subsequent chairlift only get you so far and it is still a healthy climb up on to the plateau, but once up there it is glorious.

We had great weather with rarely a cloud in the sky. Volcanic peaks stretched off into the distance, plumes of steam rose from hot springs, endless forest covered the lower slopes, but up on the ashy plateau the highlight was the carpets of wildflowers. There is a kind of summer-long rolling spring up there. As the areas of snow melt, alpine flowers quickly emerge from the previously frozen soil. They don’t last long but new areas of earth are continually exposed and the multicoloured bloom spreads like a tide. Don’t ask me to name them – I did spot some orchids and some looked like snowdrops – but their yellows, purples, and pinks contrasted beautifully with the bright white snowfields, dark grey volcanic peaks, and vivid blue sky.

The paths weave between and over snowy patches, where the strong sunlight meant you could actually see sublimation (where ice converts to water vapour without passing through the liquid phase); I tried to get a photo of it for use in future lectures.

We reached the highpoint of Hokkaido, the 2291 m Mount Asahidake. There were quite a few people on the top, most of whom had headed up from the west via Asahidake Onsen and a ropeway. Our eastern approach involved a tricky climb up a steep, slippery, and blinding white snowfield followed by a probably even trickier steep loose ashy scree slope. Subsequently descending the scree was mostly done via (un)controlled slides then we let gravity properly assist on the snow slope by using plastic bags as sledges.

It was a squeeze to fit our tent into the campgrounds and you have to tolerate the Japanese tendency for beginning their hikes ludicrously early in the morning, like around 4:30am. However, everyone is very friendly despite the general lack of shared language. We even had a note pushed through our tent by someone we had chatted to (he left much earlier than us) with his email address saying we could stay at his house next time we visited Shikoku and could borrow his car to explore the mountains there.



Upon descending back to the car, our Daisetsuzan experience was not quite over. We drove to a different trailhead, largely on an unexpectedly gravel road making us grateful for the high ground clearance of the 4x4. We arrived at Daisetsu Kogen Onsen, where most people were there for the onsen (hot spring bath), but we were there for the chances of spotting a bear. While brown bears can be found all over the national park, sightings in this area are most common and there is a dedicated Brown Bear Information Centre and trail. You must sign in and out and carry a bear bell – bears apparently don’t like tinkling. These bells are quite annoying when hikers don them elsewhere in Japan but in Hokkaido you really ought to have one.

I like a wetland and the path snaked on duckboards through little ponds, swamps, and water meadows, all of which looked quite beary to my untrained eye. However, the most abundant wildlife were the mosquitos that encouraged us to not linger. As we got higher and out of the thick moist vegetation, we reached a snowbound pond with a great view up at the mountain side. And there nibbling on some berry bush was a brown bear. Magdalena spotted it at quite a range. Fortunately, we both had binoculars so could watch it going about it’s business. It being beyond zoom range for a decent photo was probably a bonus because it meant I was content just to watch it ambling along, sniffing the air, chewing some berries, and slipping over as it tried to cross a steep snowy slope. I loved every second we shared.



The next highlight of Hokkaido was Shiretoko Peninsula. This peninsula really is a mountainous wilderness with no roads or paths and only accessible, or more realistically only visible, by boat. It stretches 70 km into the Sea of Okhotsk and is about 20 km from the Russian island of Kunashir; or depending who you are speaking to, the Japanese island of Kunashir occupied by Russia since 1945. There are some short walks you can do from visitor centres at the southern end, and these are recommended for lovely views of the mountains. But a boat trip offers the greatest chance of seeing wildlife so we took the long trip all the way to the end of the peninsula and back. The natural scenery alone made the trip worthwhile. There are high sea cliffs with waterfalls plunging straight into the sea, odd rock formations (though you need imagination to pick out “the octopus”), inspiringly endless trackless lush forest clinging to the volcanic peaks, precarious fishermen’s huts on rare patches of flat shoreline, and even a view of Russian Siberia when you round the northern tip. However, for most of the boat ride we had binoculars glued to our eyes trying to spot bears. And we spotted another two. This time they were wandering along the shore searching for crabs among the boulders. Unfortunately, the noise of the boat, especially the constant (for hours) running commentary from the boat’s captain, meant the bears soon wandered off. We also saw herds of deer, eagles, and pods of dolphins and porpoises. If you are really lucky, they get orca here. Being unable to understand the Japanese commentary meant we were given a laminated booklet in English to follow along with what we were seeing and where we were going. I really recommend this boat trip. Bring earplugs.



We headed back south to Akan-Mashu National Park, stopping on the way at the observatory to view Lake Mashu. The caldera lake is reputed to be the clearest lake in the world and Japan’s most beautiful. This may well be true but we couldn’t see more than about 5 metres through the fog. We carried on to Lake Akan and began the hike up Mt Oakan. It is a classic-looking volcano that we couldn’t see through the gloom. Despite the drizzle, the forest was still nice and the path hugs the shore of Lake Akan that looked quite mysterious while shrouded in fog. We stopped for a while at the little pretty lakes of Taro and Jiro to watch a paddling deer rip up weed from the bottom of the lake for its lunch. However, we decided hiking further would be quite pointless given the lack of any kind of view so headed to Akankoonsen and pitched the tent.

An unusual thing that this national park is famous for is “marimo”. These are a rare type of algae that grows in balls and rolls around the bed of the lake. If left for long enough – like centuries – they can end up the size of footballs. We were disappointed to learn at the visitor centre that the lake doesn’t have paths around it away from town (other than the little bit we had done) where you could go marimo spotting, but you have to take a pricey boat trip to an island to see them “in captivity”. We made do with the few in a tank in the visitor centre and set off on some of their nature trails. While the lake was still barely visible, we did see a lot more deer and the big steaming bubbling mud pools that I was perhaps overly enthusiastic about it.

Hokkaido is home to the Ainu people, the original inhabitants of this part of East Asia. After centuries of essentially forced assimilation, it was only in 1997 that the rights of Ainu to practice their culture and traditions were recognised. There is now something of a blossoming of Ainu culture and my Japanese friends further south spoke of the Ainu with reverence. Akankoonsen is quite a centre of Ainu culture and we enjoyed the Ainu restaurants with their hearty venison stews and herbal teas. In the evening we attended a show at the Lake Akan Ainu Theatre that was a mix of Ainu costumes, dancing, singing and storytelling along with quite incredible and futuristic (to the non-Japanese) graphics that somehow brought blizzards and wolves into the performance. It was good, but a bit short.



The next day’s hike up another volcano within the national park that looks stunning on photos, Mount Meakan, was also shelved because the weather was still drizzling. Some fellow campers we met in the campsite’s far-too-hot-to-keep-your-feet-in-for-more-than-five-seconds foot spa recommended Shikotsu-Toya National Park much further south, where the weather was currently better. We trusted these fathers, sons and uncles from Osaka as they had been to Hokkaido every year for the last twenty and one of them had hiked around pretty much every peak of the island over the previous few months.



To break up the journey we stopped at the Ikeda Wine Castle – like something in between a concrete grain silo and a KGB prison. Nothing much to see regarding wine-making but some of the local wines to be bought in the shop were lovely. Then we called in at Obihiro to sample its famous pork bowl – delicious. Then onwards to the cheese and ice-cream factories of Furano valley – also delicious (the cooler climate and the space mean Hokkaido is the centre of Japan’s dairy industry). Then the flower fields of Furano – the colours and scents of the rows of various types of lavender were still lovely under the overcast skies. We had initially planned to stay over in Furano but, as nice as it was, I don’t think it requires more than a few hours. Depends how long you want to spend getting the perfectly instagrammable shots amongst the flower fields. This was another advantage of having a car, we could have a look and then move on. It was also a big advantage of having a tent because we didn’t have to have our accommodation booked.



Within Shikotsu-Toya National Park the first stop was a hike up Mt Tarumae. It was fairly short but steep up onto the active crater rim from where a path looped around the steaming but flower-filled crater. The thick clouds of the previous days were lifting and parting giving us great views across the forests to Lake Shikotsu, another crater lake and Japan’s second deepest at 363 m. We were down in time for lunch on Japan’s typically concreted coast then continued to Noboribetsu for a stroll around the “hells”. This is the name given to the hot springs that are too hot and violent for the Japanese to get their kit off and sit in. Though there are still a lot of onsen resorts here where they have tamed the otherwise blasting sulphurous vents. There are nice trails and walkways leading in and around the hells and steaming lakes; the highlight being a natural footbath in the hot River Oyunuma.

The campsite that evening was on the lower slopes of Mount Yotei; Hokkaido’s Mount Fuji. It’s a beautiful conical inactive volcano, recommended by our Osaka pals a few days earlier. We set off fairly early, which was inevitable because it got light very early in Hokkaido in July, around 5:30 am, thus you can’t stay in the tent that long. The hike wasn’t so far in horizontal distance but there was over 1500 m of altitude gain. The standard signing in and out book at the trailhead showed already a lot of people were on the trail ahead of us, unsurprisingly considering Japanese hikers' ways. We overtook most on the steep zigzagging path, encumbered as they were with kit more suitable for a Himalayan expedition. But if you only have a couple of weeks holiday a year and enjoy hiking, why not spend your plentiful but hard-earned salary on the best and newest kit.

The forest thins as you climb the ever-steepening slope until you reach the grasslands near the top through which poked bright orange lilies. I keep going on about it but I think flowers are one of the highlights of Hokkaido. Even up on the top of the 1898 m perch that is Mount Yotei, with stunning views of volcanos, mountains, lakes and forests, we found our cameras were more commonly pointed down at the alpine flowers. There is a circular walk around the crater rim that offers a bit of adventure if you choose to scramble across the rocks that form the ridge.



I mentioned that an advantage of camping was not having to book accommodation ahead thus keeping our options open as to where we would go. Because of covid, all the campsites we stayed at were unmanned to prevent national park staff from coming into contact with outsiders. This meant all the campsites were free. Sounds great – and it was, saving us a lot of money, especially over hotels. However, while toilets were still open and cleaned, and rubbish was collected, showers were closed. It was expected that you would use a local onsen resort to get clean; fine if you don’t have tattoos so are allowed in. A wet-wipe wash would really have been insufficient after the Mount Yotei hike so we detoured to Lake Toya, another stunning crater lake, perfectly circular with volcanic islands in the middle. A national park lady at the beach eyed us suspiciously then said the beach was due to “close” at 5pm due to covid(??) and swimming wasn’t allowed anyway because the lake was deep(??). Later googling revealed it is 180 m deep, but we had no intention of swimming to the bottom. We walked a bit further beyond the manicured gardens, beyond some trees to a more natural beach, and jumped in for the first proper scrub in days.



The next campsite was high above Niseko, one of Hokkaido’s famously powdery winter resorts. We chose it because it sat at the trailhead for a hike offering the best view of Mount Yotei, which is better appreciated from afar rather than from atop. Unfortunately, the clouds dropped and our hike revealed no view whatsoever. Instead we rushed back to the campsite, packed up, and drove to Yoichi to visit the Nikka whisky distillery – probably Japan’s best whisky set up by the person who originally brought the idea of whisky from Scotland to Japan. It was closed due to covid. Thus, we set off for Otaru. I will note that while in Hokkaido even these drives in between places were lovely. The whole island seems to be forest and mountains and roads were never big or busy. Otaru is a pleasant little port known for its canal bounded by historic warehouses. It was nice to stroll around and indulge in the myriad tasty treats on offer and browse the always tasteful souvenir shops, as per all old towns in Japan. From Otaru it wasn’t far to Sapporo to return the car and have a final meal of Sapporo’s excellent miso ramen – some of the best ramen in Japan in our very well researched opinion.



It’s probably very clear if you have managed to read this far that we really liked Hokkaido. I would thoroughly recommend it as a holiday destination in itself, i.e. you don’t need to tag it on to a trip to Tokyo, Hakone, Kyoto, etc. Hokkaido is most famous as a winter sports location, though it ought to be as well-known as a summer hiking spot due to the many stunning multiday treks as well as great day hikes. Alternatively, it is worth coming just for the wildlife (three bears!!!). Despite seemingly travelling around much of the island, I could easily return for the same amount of time and visit completely different areas, staying in different places, walk entirely different paths, climb entirely different peaks, though I would definitely repeat many of the foods we sampled!

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Photos

Bear! Daisetsuzan National Park
We watched for it ages through the binoculars till it vanished down the icy crack.

Kaisendon in Sapporo
All kinds of raw creatures of the sea atop rice. It was delicious.

Daisetsuzan National Park
This is just before we saw the bear on the mountain slope.

Daisetsuzan National Park
Asahi-dake is in the background - the highest mountain on Hokkaido at 2291 m.

Another bear! Shiretoko Peninsula
This one was seen from the boat trip up the west side of the peninsula.