insights from frontier Japan

Snow removal work is underway on the Trans-Shiretoko Highway (National Highway Route 334, 23.8 km), which has been closed for the winter between the town of Rausu in eastern Hokkaido and the town of Shari in the Okhotsk region. On April 12, members of the press were invited to view the snow removal work being carried out.

With the establishment of the Revised Natural Parks Act in April, purposefully hiding near and approaching brown bears is now banned at Shiretoko National Park. A maximum fine of 300,000 yen has been placed on approaching and feeding wild animals. Locally, the Act is expected to deter the acclimating of brown bears to people and prevent accidents involving people and brown bears. Related organizations are gearing up to spread awareness of the new rules.

Japanese larch windbreak trees and their shadows stretching across the pure white snow in perfectly straight rows paint a beautiful picture that looks like a tapestry pattern. The scenery was discovered in the air above the town of Shari in the Okhotsk region during an aerial shooting session photographing drift ice.

I boarded a sightseeing boat departing from Rausu to photograph the Steller's sea eagles and white-tailed sea eagles wintering over the drift ice, and used a telephoto lens to shoot the birds resting on the ice floes.

On February 25, an ice freediving event – in which divers swim under the drift ice without breathing apparatus – was held at Utoro Fishing Port in the Shiretoko region of eastern Hokkaido. Next winter, Ozeki Yasuko, a Tokyo resident who was second in the women’s 2021 world rankings in the sport of freediving, plans an attempt on the Guinness World Record for diving under and parallel with the ice, and was confirming the conditions of the icy sea.

As drift-ice tourism reaches its peak in the Utoro district of the town of Shari in Shiretoko, eastern Hokkaido, “drift-ice bathing” – in which people sit on deck chairs and watch the drift ice at leisure – is gaining popularity.

Cape Chashikotsu is located in the Utoro area of Shari Town in the Okhotsk Subprefecture. There, the drift ice blanketing the Sea of Okhotsk and icicles along the cape create a world of ice. Sunlight is growing in strength, and there is an increasing freedom from the harshest winter climate of whole days in below freezing temperatures. However, at the Shiretoko Peninsula, both the land and the ocean are completely painted white with ice and snow. Low pressures bring clouds, and clouds bring snow. Spring has not come quite just yet.

In response to the nationwide sauna boom, the Kitakobushi Shiretoko Hotel & Resort in the town of Shari in the Shiretoko region of eastern Hokkaido has opened ‘Okhotsk Club Spa Suite with Sauna,’ private rooms complete with sauna.

As Okhotsk drift ice tourism reaches its peak season, numerous photographers and tourists are visiting "Cape Puyuni" in the Okhotsk region town of Shari to capture images of the setting sun sinking into the Shiretoko drift ice.