Hokkaido’s Harvest Scenery: Autumn Edition
Hokkaido is known as Japan's food base, and is a treasure trove of a wide variety of foods, such as agricultural and livestock products, seafood, wine, sake and beer.
Autumn – from September to November – is the harvest season for fruits, potatoes and other root vegetables, rice, buckwheat and the like. It is also when marine products such as salmon and Pacific saury are landed.
We have gathered together some ‘taste of autumn’ harvest scenery, much anticipated by the people of Hokkaido.
Special feature
First catch landed in Taiki as autumn salmon fishing begins on the Pacific coast in eastern Hokkaido

The autumn salmon fishing season has begun on the Pacific coast in eastern Hokkaido and, on September 1, the first catch of 3.6 tons was landed at the Taiki fishing port in the town of Taiki on the same coast in the Tokachi region.
Five boats from the Taiki Fishing Cooperative departed early on the 1st to set up the nets before temporarily returning to the port. After heading out once more at around 11:30 a.m., the boats returned to the port shortly after noon to begin landing the shining, silver salmon. The price at the port was said to be approximately 1,070 yen per kilo for females and 530 yen per kilo for males, approximately 10 to 20% higher than last year.
Autumn salmon fishing catches have been poor in recent years but, according to the managing director of the Taiki Fishing Cooperative, “The catch was quite small for the first day, but the fish themselves were large. We expect subsequent good catches.” The peak of the fishing season will continue until early October.
The fixed-net fishing season on the Pacific coast in eastern Hokkaido began on August 30. However, 14 fishing cooperatives on the coast postponed fishing for two days on August 30 and 31 in order to secure salmon that are returning up the rivers, to be used for hatching and releasing purposes in future.