Are you imagining a leisurely holiday life on the island, or are you planning an outdoor challenge to release your passion in the countryside? We would like to recommend a familiar and unfamiliar destination to you-Hokkaido, Japan. Maybe you have spent the romantic snow season here more than once: taste the sweetness of chocolate in Sapporo's White Lover Factory, look for the freshness in Love Letter on Otaru's Sakamoto Road, soak in the hot spring hotel in Hakodate, or drift freely on the powder snow of Hoshino Resort...
What beyond that? How many secret customs of Hokkaido have you seen? Have you ever visited the volcanic lake in the secluded and pristine Daodongye? Meet a group of Hokkaido people who enthusiastically embrace life? Living in the "City in the Sky" in the real world? In midsummer, choosing Hokkaido, which has always been famous for its snowy scenery, will actually have more surprises!
Hokkaido you've never seen before
Coming to Hokkaido, remote Dodong is by no means an ideal destination for efficiency-conscious tourists. However, thanks to the inconvenient transportation and the careless tourism industry, the natural heritage of Daodong has been saved from carving.
Doto refers to the eastern part of Hokkaido (blue part), which is the easternmost land of Japan mainland. Most tourists are concentrated in Doyo and Doinan areas
Wet plains that can be traced back to ancient times, volcanic lakes that have been formed for tens of thousands of years, and deep fir virgin forests... Here, you don't have to go to great lengths to find "truth", because it is everywhere.
Hokkaido East
But if it's just beautiful scenery, it's rather thin. After all, the scenery is just a torso, which is not enough to attract travelers to travel thousands of miles to explore here. What's more wonderful than the scenery is that there are a group of people who live enthusiastically at the end of the coldest eastern continent in Japan. They have injected fresh flesh, blood and soul here, and made the spirit of Hokkaido gradually clear and full.
Hokkaido East
| Encounter independent and open Hokkaido all the way north
"Not a single leaf is disturbed, not a single bird chirps, nor the breath of any other living thing … it may be an eternal place, preserving prehistoric features."-Horace Capron's first crossing of Hokkaido
The snow in Kushiro has stopped, and the outline of ground objects is gradually becoming clear. The snow shovel piled snow at the four corners of the crossroads. The old and new snow was already one person high, showing a cross-section like a thousand-layer cake and tree rings.
Today, I'm going north to stay in the middle of Daodong for a few days. I contacted the landlord in advance and drove 80 kilometers early in the morning to meet me in Kushiro. Her name is Mayumi, 52 years old, and she lives with her husband in Lake Akan.
Depart to the north
She is very different from the Japanese I have come into contact with: she is fluent in English, loves to express herself, plays European and American music in the car, and travels to the United States at least once a year. It is not difficult to understand that Hokkaido has a short history. At that time, the Meiji government invited many Americans to expand its territory, and encouraged Japanese Honshu people and foreigners to move here.
These new immigrants who bravely crossed the Tsugaru Strait withstood the long cold, rugged landscape and all kinds of beasts, thus laying the tone of Hokkaido's spirit: independence, openness and love of adventure. Studies have shown that Hokkaido people have a higher "individualism" index than people in other parts of Japan. Therefore, Hokkaido is often described as "the Japanese version of the American West".
Wet plain zone
The urban area of Kushiro is very small. After driving along Highway 53 for ten minutes, we entered the wet plain area, and our vision gradually broadened. "It was a sea 6,000 years ago," Mayumi said. As the coastline gradually retreated, sediment and peat from the Pacific Ocean accumulated here, forming 28,000 hectares of wet land in a long period of time. This miracle land is home to more than 2,000 rare animals and plants, including the red-crowned crane, which is regarded as the "god of wet land" by the indigenous Ainu people of Hokkaido.
The red-crowned crane of the "God of Wetland"
The wet plain was so large that it spanned four towns. Among them, the Crane Residence Village area was full of immortal aura from its name to its scenery. The volcanic resources throughout this area attract red-crowned cranes to overwinter from Siberia every year. The Xuelichuan River, which flows through the wet plains, won't freeze even in winter, so the Otoba Bridge on the river has become an excellent place to watch red-crowned cranes walking in the snow creek.
Otoba Bridge
Leaving the wet fields, we arrived at a deserted pasture, which Mayumi said had the best milk in all of Hokkaido. In the freezing weather, I chopped my feet and ate a milk ice cream. I looked at the snow-capped mountain opposite, and the top of the mountain appeared and disappeared in the clouds. Mayumi told me that it was Akhan Mountain, an active volcano, and the shorter one next to it was Akhan Fuji. Xiong Ahan Mountain is not far away on the shore of Ahan Lake where her home is located. She finished smoking a cigarette, turned around and bought an ice cream, brought it into the car, and drove it while eating.
Akhan Mountain and Akhan Fuji
The road gradually narrows, and the mixed coniferous and broadleaf forests all over the mountains and plains form a unique tone, which neutralizes the monotony of this season. Think of the California redwoods at similar latitudes and elevations on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Mayumi said that there is a kind of "Pinus chinensis" (also a spruce genus) in Hokkaido whose name is very similar to that of redwood. The bark is reddish, but the trunk is not as thick as that of redwood. It will be frozen and cracked at low temperature, and a long crack will be torn longitudinally. "When you hear it at night, you will think it is a hunting gunshot."
The roads gradually narrow, and the mixed coniferous and broad-leaved forests all over the mountains create a unique hue
The active volcano Xiong Ahan Mountain slowly spreads its arms ahead, and the shores of Ahan Lake are just in front of us-we are home. This is a two-story building with western-style decoration, and the heating relaxes the blood vessels. My room is on the second floor, with two opposite windows-I finally understand why I hear the sound of tree trunks cracking in the middle of the night. It turns out that outside the window is a deep forest.
Xiong Ahan Mountain slowly spreads its arms ahead
The setting sun in the afternoon passes through the window lattice leisurely, lazy and silent. Just as he was staring at it, snowflakes suddenly rustled down, like a crystal ball that would drift snow when it was shaken when he was a child. Mixed with memories about the north, all of them surged up.
The afternoon window lattice
When I was looking for a house, I found out that Mayumi didn't receive residents every Wednesday. Ask what happened, and it actually leads to an inspirational story. Mayumi has been a homestay for almost three years. Before that, she worked as a cleaner in a local hotel for 20 years. At her busiest time, she had to clean more than 20 rooms in two hours. The only advantage of this job is that you can take your children to work, she said and gestured, "Clean this bed and put your children on another bed; If it is a double bed, the child has to carry it on his back". She wants to change. Twelve years ago, she started to teach English by herself, and now she can teach primary school students at her level. She now has six students and has a home class every Wednesday. Confident in language, and with years of experience in hotels, she decided to be a homestay. She said, in fact, not many people come here to travel, and their income is half less than that of going to work, but they are twice as happy.
