insights from frontier Japan

From March 1, Roadside Station "Swan 44 Nemuro" (Rakuyo, Nemuro) is offering the month-long special "Crab fried rice with ankake sauce" (1,000 yen) in their in-house restaurant "Bird Pal".

Usui Katsusaburo Shoten, the maker of ‘Kita no Katsu,’ a local sake of Nemuro in eastern Hokkaido, released ‘Kita no Katsu Shiboritate’ (freshly pressed) on January 20. The brew is being called a ‘phantom sake’ due to the fact that only a limited amount is being produced and it is hard to obtain. At supermarkets and other stores in Nemuro, customers lined up from dawn, and the sake sold out as soon as it went on sale.

Scallop fishing began on November 24 at ‘new fishing grounds’ created in Nemuro Bay in eastern Hokkaido, in response to the 2016 ban on the drift-net fishing of salmon and trout within 200 nautical miles of Russia. Three vessels belonging to the Nemuro and Habomai fisheries cooperatives initially landed a total of 13.5 tons.

On my way back from Cape Nosappu in the city of Nemuro, I stopped off at the Hoppou Gensei Kaen (Northern Primeval Flower Garden). The north wind blowing from the strait stung my skin. Beyond the windswept forest, where the wind is so strong the trees cannot grow tall, the horizon glows red in the west, colored by the setting sun. As the temperature drops, the air compresses and clears. A brightness remains in the sky, and the mizunara (Mongolian oak) that form the windswept forest appear as silhouettes.

The Shunkunitai Wild Bird Sanctuary in the city of Nemuro in eastern Hokkaido has conducted the autumn’s first population survey of whooper swans at Lake Fuuren and Onneto Marsh, and confirmed 1,396 birds. The number is 476 more than the average for the same period in the past five years (2016–‘20). It is believed that the birds arriving earlier than usual has had an effect on the numbers.

The Habomai Fisheries Cooperative in the Nemuro region of eastern Hokkaido began diving for sea urchin on the Pacific side of the Nemuro Peninsula on November 1. Diving for sea urchin usually starts in early December, but the start of the fishing season has been brought forward due to the increasing damage caused by the red tide.

Lying comfortably on its mother’s abdomen is a baby sea otter (pup). As its fur is still soft, it is unable to dive beneath the water. 　The pup’s fur is meticulously groomed by the mother otter; air is allowed to flow between the hairs, providing buoyancy and insulation to protect it from the cold sea water. As the mother dives beneath the water in search of food, the pup floats silently on the surface of the water as it waits for her return.

The ban on large-scale fishing vessels (at least 100 tons), which are the mainstay of Pacific-saury net fishing in eastern Hokkaido, was lifted on August 20. Despite the forecast of low numbers of saury arriving in the region, 50 boats departed from three ports in the Kushiro-Nemuro subprefecture at just after midnight on that day, and headed towards international waters approximately 1,500 km away.

While enjoying a walk amid a refreshing breeze on a footpath that stretches from residential land in Chuo-ku in the city of Sapporo to the midst of the mountains, I hear the echoes of a black woodpecker in the distance.