Nemuro and Cape Nosappu

Hokkaido, Japan · Town / small city, Countryside / satoyama

The eastern edge of Japan, where the country runs out at a wind-scoured cape with the disputed islands in view and the archipelago's first sunrise. A saury-and-crab fishing town ringed by Ramsar wetlands, and in winter one of the best places on earth to watch Steller's sea eagles.

The essentials

Getting there

Train + bus — Nemuro is the end of the track: JR Hokkaido's Hanasaki Line (the Kushiro-Nemuro section of the Nemuro Main Line, 135.4 km) terminates at Nemuro Station, which since 15 March 2025 — when neighbouring Higashi-Nemuro closed — is Japan's easternmost station. It is about two and a half hours from Kushiro on a local train, and that is where the catch lies: only six daily trains run Kushiro to Attoko, of which four or five continue to Nemuro, plus one Rapid Nosappu and one Rapid Hanasaki a day, so you plan the trip around the timetable rather than the other way round. Reach Kushiro from Sapporo on the Limited Express Ozora (about four hours) or by air; from Tokyo, fly to Kushiro (1h40) and take the 45-minute airport bus. Nemuro Kotsu also runs intercity buses to Nakashibetsu Airport (about 120 minutes) and coaches towards Kushiro and Sapporo. Locally, what matters: Cape Nosappu is served by Nemuro Kotsu's Nosappu line from the terminal in front of the station, 23.5 km and roughly 44-47 minutes, with five departures a day each way Monday to Friday (6:40, 8:20, 11:05, 13:35 and 16:10 from Nemuro) and four at weekends and on public holidays, since the first run does not operate then; the company sells a return ticket for ¥2,460. Those five buses are enough to do the cape in half a day without a car, while the Attoko line reaches Shunkunitai (Tobai stop) and the Hanasaki line the car stone and the museum. What the bus will not give you is the Notsuke Peninsula, Kiritappu or the wild flower garden: for those you need a rental car or a taxi. By road it is about 2h30 Kushiro-Nemuro on Route 44 and around two hours to Rausu on Route 335. Expect thick sea fog in summer and iced-over roads and ground blizzards from December to March.

Frequently asked questions about Nemuro and Cape Nosappu

What to do in Nemuro and Cape Nosappu: 29 activities

• Cape Nosappu, Japan's eastern edge 2 h must-see

  The easternmost point in Japan you can drive to: a bare headland of grass and wind with Hokkaido's oldest lighthouse, first lit in 1872 and the island's first Western-style light. Nosappu line bus from the terminal at Nemuro Station, 23.5 km and about 45 minutes, with five departures a day Monday to Friday and four at weekends and on public holidays; Nemuro Kotsu sells a return ticket for ¥2,460. There is no village here, just fishermen's houses, a petrol station and a post office, the easternmost in the country.

• Shunkunitai and Lake Furen 3 h must-see

  An 8 km sandbar between the Sea of Okhotsk and Lake Furen, a Ramsar wetland, with spruce forest growing on dunes, salt marsh and boardwalks. Over 340 bird species have been recorded around Nemuro and this is where you see them. The municipal nature centre is free, open 9:00-17:00 April to September and to 16:30 October to March, closed Wednesdays, and lends binoculars and field guides. Attoko line bus to the Tobai stop and a two-minute walk; 15 minutes by car from town.

• The Hanasaki Line, train to the end of Japan 2.5 h must-see

  The 135 km from Kushiro to Nemuro is one of the strangest train rides in Japan: a one- or two-car diesel railcar crossing marsh, empty pasture and Akkeshi Bay, with stops where nobody gets off and emergency braking for deer. JR Hokkaido markets it as 'the railway that explores the Earth' while calling it unsustainable: about 200 passengers a day, and the line is on the company's list of sections it cannot maintain alone. Four or five trains a day reach Nemuro.

• Steller's sea eagles in winter 4 h only 10 Dec - 10 Mar

  From December to March Lake Furen freezes and Steller's sea eagles and white-tailed eagles, both designated natural monuments in Japan, winter along its shores, perching in the dead trees of the sandbar and out on the ice, sometimes dozens at once. February brings the most birds and the harshest conditions: minus twelve with wind is unremarkable. The reliable spots are the Shunkunitai nature centre and the viewing deck at Swan 44, both free and both with a spotting scope.

• Cape Kiritappu, the wetland and the sea otters 3.5 h Hamanaka · 60 min

  West of Nemuro, in the town of Hamanaka, Cape Kiritappu is one of the few places in Japan to see wild sea otters from land, on the rocks at the foot of the cliff: bring binoculars and patience. Behind it lies Kiritappu Wetland, a peat bog listed under the Ramsar Convention since 1993 at 2,504 hectares, with a boardwalk and a visitor centre, in flower from June to August. An hour by car from Nemuro on Routes 44 and 142.

• Escalop, a dish that exists only here 1 h

  Escalop — from the French escalope — is Nemuro's dish: buttered rice with bamboo shoots underneath, a breaded pork cutlet on top, demi-glace over everything, served in a deep bowl with a spoon. It was invented in town in the 1960s and half a dozen places now make it, each their own way. The classic is Dorian, open since 1969, in Tokiwacho: ¥1,180 for the escalop and ¥1,280 for the oriental version, 10:00-20:00 (last order 19:30), closed Tuesdays unless a public holiday.

• Hanasaki crab and teppo-jiru 1.5 h only 1 Jul - 30 Sep

  Hanasaki-gani is a spiny-shelled crab, a relative of the king crab, caught almost exclusively in these waters: boiled and eaten as it is, with the leftovers going into teppo-jiru, the miso soup of cut legs whose name comes from the gunshot crack of snapping them. The city gives the season as spring to autumn depending on the ground, but the good fresh stuff in town runs July to September; outside that it is usually frozen. Expensive even here, several thousand yen a crab, from the market or in downtown izakaya.

• Japan's earliest sunrise 1.5 h

  Being the furthest east, Nosappu sees the sun come up before anywhere else accessible in Japan, and at the June solstice that means shortly after half past three in the morning. On 1 January the town holds Hatsu-hi-mode: sunrise around 6:49, Nemuro taiko drums, crab ramen and crab curry, a limited run of wooden ema, a special bus from the station taking 40 minutes, and a hundred free parking spaces; it is the only day of the year the cape gets crowded. The rest of the year the first scheduled bus arrives too late for sunrise: you need a car, a taxi, or a bed nearby.

• Kotohira Shrine festival 4 h only 9-11 Aug

  From 9 to 11 August, Kotohira Shrine — founded in 1806 by the merchant Takadaya Kahei — brings out its dashi floats with their tekomai dancers, the sakidaiko drums and the mikoshi: the 9th is the floats' competition, the 10th the main procession and the 11th a second run. The tourist association bills it as one of Hokkaido's three great festivals and it is Nemuro's event of the year, so accommodation sells out months ahead.

• Nemuro saury and kaisendon 1.5 h only 15 Aug - 31 Oct

  Hanasaki port lands more sanma — Pacific saury — than any other harbour in Japan, and the first August landing makes the Hokkaido papers. What you eat here is toro-sanma, the big fat autumn fish, grilled with salt, as sashimi, as nigiri, or piled on a kaisendon with whatever else came in that morning. The city puts the best of it from August to October, and catches have been erratic for years, so prices swing a lot from season to season.

• Nemuro Saury Festival 3 h only the last weekend of September

  On a weekend at the end of September the quay at Nemuro port becomes a collective grill: freshly landed saury is handed out and you cook it yourself over charcoal at the kanpeki-robata, the dockside coal pits. There are also stalls of saury dishes cooked by the harbour women, a produce fair and a stage. The fish giveaway ends before the festival does, and stops as soon as the catch runs out, so go early.

• Notsuke Peninsula and the dead forest of Todowara 3 h Bekkai · 75 min

  A 26-to-28 km sand spit curled around Notsuke Bay, its base in Shibetsu and its tip in Bekkai. Todowara is what remains of a forest of todomatsu fir that the sea salted to death: white trunks still standing in the marsh, fewer every year, because the place really is coming apart; further in, Narawara is the same thing in Mongolian oak. You drive in on the Flower Road, fifteen kilometres of prefectural route 950, to the nature centre, then half an hour on foot or by cart along the boardwalk. An hour and a quarter by car from Nemuro. Without a car there are only seasonal coaches: the Todowara-go from Shibetsu from early July to early August, the Shiretoko-Kushiro-go from mid-July to mid-October, and the East Hokkaido Express Bus from late January to mid-March, which stops at the nature centre.

• Ochiishi cruise in winter 2.5 h booking only 1 Jan - 31 Mar

  The same boat sails from January to March, and that is when the bird photographers come: both sea eagles over the water, alcids in winter plumage, northern sea ducks and otters. The fare rose to ¥12,000 for adults and ¥6,000 for children from January 2026. One sailing a day, 11:00 to 13:30, minimum five passengers, booked three days ahead by phone or web form; be at the quay half an hour early and expect cancellations in a heavy sea.

• Ochiishi cruise: tufted puffins 2.5 h booking only 1 Jun - 31 Aug

  A fishing boat out of Ochiishi harbour runs to Yururi and Moyururi islands, the only place in Japan where the tufted puffin (etopirika) breeds. Summer also brings spectacled guillemots, red-faced cormorants, rhinoceros auklets, Laysan albatross and sea otters. One sailing a day, 11:00 to 13:30, about two and a half hours; in 2025 it cost ¥8,000 for adults and ¥5,000 for children, booking compulsory three days ahead with a minimum of five passengers. You board at the Etopiri-kan run by the Ochiishi fishing co-operative, 18 km and 25 minutes by car from Nemuro Station.

• The disputed islands from the cape 1 h

  From Nosappu, when the fog lifts, you can see the southern Kurils: Kaigara lighthouse and Suisho island in the Habomai group lie only a few kilometres of water away. Japan claims them as the Northern Territories and Russia has administered them since 1945. The cape is covered in monuments to that claim: the Bridge of the Four Islands, four blocks meeting in a symbolic gate, and the Flame of Prayer, lit from a fire that ignited spontaneously on the Okinawan island of Hateruma on 15 May 1972 and was carried here across the country by youth groups. Fifteen minutes here explains half of what you see in town.

• Bokyo no Ie and the Hokuho-kan 1 h

  'The house of longing', a spiral concrete building beside the cape, exists because Nosappu is nearly always fogged in: inside are telescopes, maps and the background to the dispute, and it doubles as a meeting place for the islands' former residents and their descendants. Free admission, 9:00-17:00 (to 16:30 November to February), closed Mondays from November to April and 29 December to 3 January.

• Hanasaki lighthouse and the car stone 1 h

  Below Hanasaki lighthouse, right in the surf, sits a basalt formation with radial jointing about six metres across that looks like a stone cartwheel: it is a national natural monument and one of the largest of its kind anywhere. Free, open access, with parking. Seven km from town, about fifteen minutes by car, or the Hanasaki line bus to the lighthouse turn-off plus a fifteen-minute walk.

• Japan's last cherry blossom 1 h only 15-31 May

  The cherry blossom front ends here: the chishima-zakura at Seiryu-ji temple flowers in mid to late May, later than anywhere else in the country. It is not a tree but a shrub of one to five metres with pale pink flowers, and the temple's specimen was brought from Kunashir island in 1869 and moved into the grounds in 1903. There are about forty cherries in the compound and entry is free.

• Nemuro Crab Festival 3 h only one weekend in late August

  The port's other festival, this one for the hanasaki crab: boiled crab below market price, demonstrations of how to break one open, and two days of stage acts. In 2026 it moved forward to 22-23 August, a week earlier than usual, a sign that the date shifts with the fishing season; Saturday 10:00-16:00 and Sunday 9:00-15:00 at the Nemuro port ground.

• Nemuro harbour and the patrol cutters 1 h

  Nemuro lives off the sea in a way you can see at a glance: two harbours, Nemuro and Hanasaki, a saury and crab fleet, processing sheds, and moored among the trawlers the white and blue cutters of the Japan Coast Guard, which patrol a maritime border Japan and Russia do not draw the same way. It is walkable from the centre and it is where the saury festival is held.

• Nemuro Museum of History and Nature 1.5 h Hanasaki, Nemuro · 10 min

  Housed in a brick building put up in 1942 as a navy communications station, later a primary school and a museum since 1990: archaeology from the peninsula's sites, documents on the 1792 arrival of the Russian envoy Laxman, border markers from Sakhalin, and mounted specimens of Blakiston's fish owl and sea otter. Free, 9:30-16:30, closed Mondays, public holidays and 29 December to 3 January. Ten minutes by taxi from the station.

• Northern Wild Flower Garden 1.5 h only 1 Jun - 30 Sep

  Seventy-five hectares of coastal meadow on the Okhotsk side of the peninsula, with around a hundred species flowering from early summer into autumn: hiogi-ayame irises in violet drifts, orange ezo-kanzo daylilies and rugosa roses. The oaks grow stunted and bent by the north-westerly, like bonsai, and grazing horses do the mowing. Free parking, about 20 minutes by car from Nemuro Station.

• Odaito boat to Todowara and the seals 2 h booking Odaito, Bekkai · 70 min only 19 May - 31 Oct

  From Odaito fishing harbour, Bekkai's municipal boats cross the bay to Todowara — ¥3,500 adults, ¥1,750 children, free below school age — and others go out to watch wild seals on the sandbanks. The 2026 season opened on 19 May and everything depends on the weather. The old bus-plus-boat package no longer exists; there are now only limited-date connections with the regional bus, so it is worth calling ahead (0153-86-2533).

• Odaito swans and the frozen bay 2 h Odaito, Bekkai · 70 min only 10 Jan - 20 Mar

  In deep winter Notsuke Bay freezes over and the sandbar dissolves into a white plain with no horizon, which locals call hyoheisen, the 'flat ice line'. This is when whooper swans crowd into the open water at Odaito alongside eiders and sea eagles. No tourist facility is open: you watch from the spit road and from the harbour, and you need a winter-ready car and clothing for a freezing sea wind.

• Swan 44 Nemuro roadside station 1.5 h Ruta 44, Nemuro · 20 min

  The Route 44 roadside station looks out over Lake Furen and Shunkunitai through a window wall fitted with telescopes: whooper swans in spring and autumn, red-crowned cranes with chicks in summer, and both eagles in winter. Shop and information open 9:00-17:00 April to October and 10:00-16:00 November to March, closed Mondays; the Bird Paul restaurant serves Hanasaki crab kamameshi for ¥2,500.

• The chashi of the Nemuro Peninsula 1.5 h

  Chashi are enclosures the Ainu built between the 16th and 18th centuries on the clifftops of the Nemuro Strait, with semicircular or square ditches above the sea; they served as forts, lookouts, places of prayer and places of negotiation. Thirty-two survive in the municipality and twenty-four are a national historic site. They are number 1 on the Hundred Famous Castles of Japan list, since 2007, and its hardest stamp, because all that remains of the enclosure is the shape of the ground. Only two are laid out for visitors: Notsukamafu 1 and 2, and Onnemoto, on the road to Nosappu.

• Meiji Park and the brick silos 1 h

  The park occupies Japan's second national ranch, opened in 1875, and preserves three brick silos from 1932 and 1936 that are among the largest of their type in the country and have been registered cultural properties since 2001. It has been Nemuro's city park since 1982, joined the Hundred Historic Parks list in 2006, and has walking paths and parking. A fifteen-minute walk from the station, free.

• Monkey Punch Collection in Hamanaka 1.5 h Hamanaka · 60 min

  Hamanaka is the hometown of Monkey Punch, creator of Lupin the Third, and it makes no secret of it. The Monkey Punch Collection sits inside the Kiritappu municipal cultural centre, free to enter: a recreation of his studio, 'AGITO', life-size figures of Lupin, Jigen and Fujiko, original artwork, and a real Fiat 500 on the ground floor. Manhole covers around town carry the gang, and the cape lighthouse has appeared in the series. A short stop that pairs with the wetland.

• Nemuro on foot: Japan's easternmost town 2 h

  Under twenty-two thousand people and falling — 21,918 at the end of 2025, five hundred fewer than the year before — a shopping street with more shutters down than up, the station building with its sign reading 'Japan's easternmost station', which it genuinely is since Higashi-Nemuro closed in March 2025, and a border-town culture that feels unlike the rest of Hokkaido. The tourist office beside the station hands out maps and the chashi stamp.

What only happens on specific dates

• Steller's sea eagles in winter 10 Dec - 10 Mar
• Ochiishi cruise in winter 1 Jan - 31 Mar
• Odaito swans and the frozen bay 10 Jan - 20 Mar
• Japan's last cherry blossom 15-31 May
• Odaito boat to Todowara and the seals 19 May - 31 Oct
• Ochiishi cruise: tufted puffins 1 Jun - 31 Aug
• Northern Wild Flower Garden 1 Jun - 30 Sep
• Hanasaki crab and teppo-jiru 1 Jul - 30 Sep
• Kotohira Shrine festival 9-11 Aug
• Nemuro saury and kaisendon 15 Aug - 31 Oct
• Nemuro Crab Festival one weekend in late August
• Nemuro Saury Festival the last weekend of September

Ready-made routes through Nemuro and Cape Nosappu

Chains well with

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