Hokkaido's Summer Magic

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday September 15, 2008

Louise Southerden. The author was a guest of the Japan National Tourist Organization.

When the snow's gone so have the tourists and nature turns on its "green" season, writes Louise Southerden.

Hokkaido is the perfect place to introduce yourself to Japan. More natural and less inhabited than the rest of the country, and just an hour and a half by air from Tokyo, it's ideal for anyone wanting to experience Japanese culture and cuisine while rubbing shoulders with pine and beech forests, active volcanoes, pristine lakes and few other travellers.

Despite more than 25,000 Australian skiers and snowboarders flocking to Hokkaido's world-class ski resorts last winter, only 1500 Australians visited Japan's northern island last summer; my companions and I didn't see any other foreign travellers when we were there in June this year. Sure, English may not be as widely spoken as in other, more touristy parts of Japan, but that's part of the adventure (BYO phrasebook or travel with a bilingual guide). Besides, summer, called the "green" season in contrast to Hokkaido's "white" winter, is an ideal time to visit.

Nature is the main drawcard in summer as it is in winter. And for an island roughly the size of Tasmania, Hokkaido has a lot of nature. Seventy per cent of it is covered in native forests and 10 per cent is protected in national parks. It's not unusual to see wildlife such as deer and red fox by the side of the road. In Shiretoko Peninsula in eastern Hokkaido, rangers have to check the national park for brown bears every spring, the way rangers check for crocodiles in Kakadu, before opening the area to the public.

Canoes and gondolas

My first experience of Hokkaido was from a canoe. Driving east from the airport just south of Sapporo, the capital city, to our first night's stop near the middle of the island, through farmland and past rustic wooden houses, we came to Lake Kanayama. Mist clung to the forested hills as we climbed into canoes and paddled out to the middle of the enormous lake. Hokkaido suddenly seemed like a big place.

Our accommodation for the night was a ski hotel that rose like a tall, green skyscraper from the surrounding hills. Many of Hokkaido's ski fields are open in summer and this one, Tomamu, has an unusual summertime attraction: an early-morning gondola ride up to 1088 metres to see a phenomenon called the "sea of cloud" (unkai). Our gondola ticket had a photo of the unkai at sunrise - so we knew what we were missing when we reached the top and found ourselves enveloped in fog - but riding in the bright yellow four-person gondolas and seeing deer grazing below and mountain doves flying above (our guide said he sometimes sees bears on the mountain in spring), were compensation enough.

Lake Shikaribetsu, in Daisetsuzan National Park, was our next stop. You can kayak, canoe and fish on the lake in summer; in winter it freezes and the locals build an ice village of igloos and ice lodges you can stay in. We opted for a nature walk through a dark forest. Our guide, Tomo, stopped us every few metres as we hiked along a trail carpeted in pine needles for "show and tell" about Sakhalin fir trees, deer tracks, woodpecker holes - which made for a peaceful, almost meditative, stroll.

Blooms and ice-creams

Of course there's more to summer in Hokkaido than nature walks, gondolas and canoes - including some unusual offerings. Koshimizu Natural Flower Garden, for instance, is a botanical garden where not a single bloom has been planted. This eight-kilometre stretch of sand dunes on Hokkaido's north coast bursts to life in mid-summer with wildflowers, particularly wild roses and strawberries - and with volunteer guides in yellow jackets, sunhats and white gloves who delight in showing off the flowers.

But the garden's highlight is inside its souvenir shop: gelato ice-creams in unexpected flavours. I had a double cone of cheese and "drift ice" (ice-cream made from the sea ice that floats south from Siberia and collects along this coastline every winter). My companions had tomato, mountain cranberry and, of all things, asparagus.

The food in Hokkaido may be surprising but it is never disappointing. In addition to some of the freshest seafood in Japan, beer-flavoured caramels and bear-adorned cans of guarana, even boiled eggs cooked over steam vents on Mt Io (the eggs come in paper bags that say, in Japanese, "saving energy, steamed egg cooked by the volcano"), Hokkaido is also famous for its buckwheat noodles (soba).

Soba tea and cakes

You can learn how to make soba at Shintoku Soba House. Under the watchful eye of our elderly teacher, whose rouged cheeks were as red as her apron, we kneaded, rolled and finally cut shapeless blobs of soba dough into neat, ribbon-like noodles. Then we ate them for lunch in Shintoku's restaurant, with delicious caffeine-free soba tea, followed by soba ice-cream.

That afternoon, we stopped at Ryugetsu Sweet Pia Garden, an enormous cake factory in the countryside, right on one of Hokkaido's main roads. Thirty different cakes are made there, including their signature one, Sanporoku: a butter cake that, in keeping with Hokkaido's natural reputation, is drizzled with white and milk chocolate to make it look uncannily like a small birch log. As if to single-handedly bust the myth that Japan is expensive, Ryugetsu offers free samples in its shop, free factory tours and free coffee in its cafe (slices of delectable cakes to go with your coffee cost only about $1.50).

Nature with a twist

But it's the unexpected natural delights that seem to stay with you long after a trip to Hokkaido: handfeeding Ezo chipmunks overlooking the picturesque Lake Mashu; being woken by the sun pouring through undrawn curtains at 3.30am (it really does rise at this unearthly hour in summer); soaking your feet in a hot pool you have dug yourself from the sand on the edge of Lake Kushiro (the local council has provided wooden benches for foot bathers so you can sit while you soak).

And, perhaps most unusually, taking a cruise on Lake Akan to see, in purpose-built aquariums, bright green moss balls (marimo) that look like something Dr Seuss might have dreamed up. Marimo form when gentle wave action rolls fragments of freshwater algae into furry green balls as big as basketballs - Lake Akan is the only place in the world where marimo are spherical - which eventually burst, starting the whole process again.

Indigenous Japan

Lake Akan is also a good place to make contact with Hokkaido's indigenous Ainu people. In June this year, Japan's parliament passed a long overdue resolution recognising the Ainu as "an indigenous people with a distinct language, religion and culture". We watched a mesmerising performance of traditional barefoot dancing in Lake Akan's Ainu village. There's an Ainu museum in the village too and it is possible to step off the tourist track to chat with Ainu shopkeepers - one took it upon himself to dress me in authentic Ainu clothes then handed me a large wooden fish so my bemused friends could take photos.

We spent our last morning off the coast of Shiretoko National Park, which was World Heritage listed in 2005. In winter, our ship takes tourists on ice-breaker trips through the drift ice. On warm, sunny days like this, however, it was taking it slow, calmly cruising past waterfalls that flowed down steep cliffs into a glassy sea. And so were my fellow passengers, all Japanese. Some of them took pictures but most seemed content to sit on benches on the open decks, gazing at the wonderful world of summertime in Hokkaido.

Need to know

Getting there Qantas (www.qantas.com.au) flies daily to Narita, Tokyo. Japan Airlines (www.jal.co.jp/en) flies daily from Haneda (Tokyo's domestic terminal, an hour by shuttle bus from Narita) to New Chitose Airport in southern Hokkaido and Memambetsu in north-eastern Hokkaido.

Where to stay Hokkaido is famous for its hot-spring baths (onsen) and "onsen hotels", such as Shikaribetsu Kohan Hot Spring Hotel on Lake Kanayama (onsen.u-p.co.jp/get.php?action=get_en&code=41), Kawayu Grand Hotel Alex (www.hongu.jp/english/kawayu/index.htm) and Shiretoko Grand Hotel near Shiretoko Peninsula (www.shiretoko.co.jp). Many of Hokkaido's ski resorts are open in summer, such as Alpha Resort Tomamu (www.snowtomamu.jp).

More information Japan National Tourism Organization, www.jnto.org.au

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

Back to News Index | Back to Home