The end of the line

Northern and eastern Hokkaido, out to where Japan stops

The Japan that appears in no itinerary. Rishiri and Rebun are two islands facing Sakhalin, with a volcano rising straight out of the sea and alpine flowers growing at sea level. Shiretoko is Natural World Heritage and genuine brown bear country, where access to the Five Lakes changes depending on whether bears are around. And Cape Nosappu, in Nemuro, is the easternmost point of the country: from the lookout you can see, a few kilometres away, the islands Japan and Russia have been disputing since 1945.

The itinerary, stop by stop

1. Sapporo2 days

   A grid city laid out on the Ishikari plain, with a scrap of its original forest still standing downtown, and you can take the whole thing in from the Moiwa ropeway. You eat lamb grilled on a domed iron plate and a miso ramen sealed under a layer of lard that keeps the bowl scalding to the last mouthful; soup curry was invented here too. The city's own hot-spring town sits in a gorge of the Toyohira river.

   Sapporo opens the route for practical reasons rather than desire: New Chitose airport is Hokkaido's front door, and the day's single direct Soya limited express to Wakkanai leaves from Sapporo station, which is the train the rest of the trip hangs on. Two days is the catalogue minimum and also the right amount here: one for the city on foot, with the Mount Moiwa ropeway at dusk over the grid and Ishikari bay, miso ramen and jingisukan; one to get out of the centre without leaving the city limits, either to Jozankei Onsen, in a river gorge about seventy-five minutes away by bus, or to the Akarenga building and the Pirka Kotan ainu centre.

   Worth saying plainly: in June this is Sapporo without its postcard. The Snow Festival runs in early February, the Teine ski season ends in early May, the university's ginkgo avenue turns in late October and the Autumn Fest belongs to September. What remains is a comfortable capital where you eat very well, and the one point on the whole route where timetables do not rule your day. It is also where a thread starts that runs to the end: Pirka Kotan sets out that the ainu were colonised from the nineteenth century on and that the 1899 law forced their assimilation, a subject that returns in Abashiri and closes in Akan.

2. Rishiri & Rebun3 days

   Two islands at the very top of Japan: Rishiri is a 1,721 m volcano rising straight out of the sea, and Rebun, 45 minutes away by ferry, is a carpet of alpine flowers at sea level with no bears or snakes. In summer, just-landed sea urchin and hikes with Sakhalin on the horizon.

   Going north is the trip's first change of scale: about five hours ten in the Soya to Wakkanai, then an hour forty on the Heartland ferry to Oshidomari or Kafuka, with another forty-five minutes of boat between the two islands. There is also a flight of roughly fifty minutes from Sapporo if the train feels like too much. Since the connection makes you set foot in Wakkanai anyway, Cape Soya fits in the gap: fifty minutes by bus to the monument at Japan's northern end, with Sakhalin forty-three kilometres off on a clear day, the statue of Mamiya Rinzo and, on the rise behind, the tower remembering flight 007, shot down in 1983.

   Three days split awkwardly on purpose, because these are two different islands. Rebun is horizontal: the Momoiwa lookout trail, a bit over five kilometres and some three hours across slopes of alpine flowers growing at sea level with Rishiri in front of you, or the thirteen-kilometre cape route, which depends on the local bus and has to be planned with the timetable in hand. Rishiri is vertical, and that is where the uncomfortable choice sits: climbing Rishiri-Fuji is ten or eleven hours and around fifteen hundred metres of ascent, with a portable toilet compulsory and a rule that says turn back if the eighth station takes you more than four hours. That day eats one of the three, and Rebun is what gets dropped.

   The version without the summit fills the days just as well and leaves room to eat: Himenuma pond early, when the volcano reflects whole in still water, Lake Otatomari, the twenty-five kilometres of cycle path between Oshidomari and Kutsugata, Cape Peshi in the twenty minutes before the ferry. And sea urchin, which is half the reason for coming in June: murasaki is fished from the start of the month and the pricier bafun from the middle, so early June may be missing one of the two, and the price and even the menu depend on what came in that morning. This is one of the two most expensive stops on the route, wind and frequent fog included.

3. Abashiri1 day

   A fishing town on the Sea of Okhotsk, known for its Meiji-era prison turned open-air museum and for the icebreaker that ploughs through Siberian drift ice in the depths of winter. In summer it becomes a place of coastal lagoons, wildflower meadows and lakes that turn crimson in September.

   This is the leg that pays for the shape of the route: you have to cross the top of the island, from the Sea of Japan to the Okhotsk coast, and the clearest proof of how little lies up there is that every way into Abashiri the catalogue lists comes from the south, the Okhotsk limited express from Sapporo in some five and a half hours with barely a couple of direct services a day, the Taisetsu from Asahikawa, or a flight into Memanbetsu. By car it is a driving day and that is that. What you get in exchange is a complete change of register, because Abashiri is a winter town and in June it is not one.

   The Aurora icebreaker sails from 20 January to 31 March, the smelt fishing and the Ryuhyo Monogatari train are winter too, and Lake Notoro does not turn red with glasswort until mid-September. So here the drift ice is something you meet in a room at fifteen below on Mount Tento rather than out of the window. The two days fall into place by themselves: one in town, with the Prison Museum and its radial five-wing wooden cell block, the oldest surviving example of its kind, which states without softening it that convicts were forced to open Hokkaido's roads, the same roads you have been driving to get here.

   The other day is the coast with the car, and June is when that makes sense: the Koshimizu wild flower garden, eight kilometres of dunes between the sea and Lake Tofutsu with some forty species in bloom from June to August, the Ramsar lagoon itself, the wooden halt at Kitahama with the Teishaba cafe papered in visiting cards, and the all-round view from Mount Tento. In town there is also the Museum of Northern Peoples, which is academic and not run by the communities it covers, something the catalogue says out loud and which points ahead to the last stop of the trip.

4. Shiretoko3 days

   A remote peninsula at Hokkaido's northeastern tip, a UNESCO World Natural Heritage site since 2005, home to brown bears, eagles and largely undeveloped coastline.

   Shari is the hinge: train to Shiretoko-Shari via Abashiri and then about fifty minutes by bus to Utoro, or the Okhotsk coast road by car, which is what the entry recommends because the places worth seeing here are far apart. This is the most isolated stop in the catalogue and the only World Natural Heritage site on the route, but the real shift is not the scenery: you stop being the visitor who decides. At the Five Lakes, the raised boardwalk of some eight hundred metres to the first lake is free, accessible and unrestricted, protected by an electric fence; the ground-level trail between the lakes runs under different regimes and in bear activity season requires a safety briefing or a guide. June sits squarely inside that season.

   The protocol is worth reading in full before you come, because brown bears here are not a remote possibility: Shiretoko has the highest density in Japan, with animals of two metres and five hundred kilos, and June and July are among the months calling for most care. You do not walk alone; you go in a group making noise, you avoid dawn and dusk, and in an encounter you do not run, you speak in a firm low voice and back away slowly. You also do not stop the car for photographs: bear jams get them used to people and end up getting them killed. Which is why in June the two sound formats are a guided trek with a naturalist and a boat.

   The three days order themselves like this: one on the Utoro side, with the short flat walk from the Nature Centre to the hundred-metre cliff of the Furepe falls, Cape Puyuni at sunset and the Utoro baths looking out at the sea; one on the water, where the long cruise of nearly four hours to Cape Shiretoko is the one to take, since it is the only way to see the unreachable tip of the peninsula; and one crossing to Rausu, which doubles as the exit towards Nemuro, with the free Kuma-no-yu rotenburo, the port's kombu and the cetacean cruise in the strait. What June does not give you is Kamuiwakka on foot, which the catalogue only opens in July.

   What puts it in this route: Shiretoko Five Lakes (Shiretoko Goko) · Living with brown bears: the protocol

5. Nemuro and Cape Nosappu3 days

   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.

   Rausu to Nemuro is about two hours on route 335, and arriving by road has a design advantage: it saves the train for the way out. The Hanasaki line, a hundred and thirty-five kilometres of marsh, empty pasture and Akkeshi bay in a one or two-car diesel railcar, is one of the things to do at this stop, and it works far better as the journey to the next destination than as an out-and-back. Nemuro station is where the track ends and, since neighbouring Higashi-Nemuro closed on 15 March 2025, the easternmost station in the country.

   Cape Nosappu takes half a day with no car at all: twenty-three and a half kilometres and about forty-five minutes on the bus that leaves from in front of the station, with five departures a day Monday to Friday and four at weekends because the first one of the morning does not run. There is no village, only fishermen's houses, a petrol station and Japan's easternmost post office, the oldest lighthouse in Hokkaido lit in 1872, and a dense cluster of monuments to a claim: the four-island arch and the Flame of Prayer, carried here across the country from a fire kindled on Hateruma in May 1972. Across a few kilometres of water, the Habomai islands Russia has administered since 1945.

   The catch is thick summer fog, and Bokyo no Ie exists because of it: a concrete spiral beside the cape with telescopes, maps and the background to the dispute, and a meeting place for the islands' former inhabitants. The other two days go to wetlands, Shunkunitai and Lake Furen, an eight-kilometre sand bar where the more than three hundred and forty bird species recorded in Nemuro are actually seen, and Kiritappu, an hour away by car, with sea otters visible from the clifftop if you bring binoculars and patience. June adds the single daily boat from Ochiishi to the Yururi islands, the only place in Japan where the tufted puffin breeds, and takes the rest away: sanma, hanasaki crab and the sea eagles belong to other months. Escalop stays.

   What puts it in this route: Cape Nosappu, Japan's eastern edge · The disputed islands from the cape · Cape Kiritappu, the wetland and the sea otters

6. Akan-Mashu2 days

   Three very different volcanic lakes in Akan-Mashu National Park: Akan, home to marimo moss balls and Hokkaido's largest Ainu community; Mashu, a cliff-ringed caldera with astonishingly clear water; and Kussharo, where the sand on the shore is warm to the touch and whooper swans spend the winter.

   What puts it in this route: Lake Mashu from Observatories 1 and 3

7. Kushiro2 days

   A foggy fishing port with famous sunsets on the edge of Japan's largest wetland, where the red-crowned crane recovered from about twenty birds to nearly two thousand. It also eats better than most cities its size: a fish market, robatayaki grills and local fried specialities.

   Kushiro closes the route because it is where the trip plugs back into the network: the Ozora limited express runs direct to Sapporo in about four hours and there is a flight to Haneda of an hour forty. You arrive on the Hanasaki line, two and a half hours of local train from Nemuro, and the contrast lands immediately: this is the first stop since Sapporo that eats like a city. Washo market and its katte-don first thing, the open-air robata tent on the quay, which runs from the third Friday of May to the end of October, the historic robatayaki in Suehiro with no English menu, and bone-in zangi at Torimatsu, open from five and cash only.

   A full day is owed to the marsh, the largest in Japan. Mozuna Kiko's observatory, modelled on the sedge mounds of the wetland, has a roof terrace over the plain and a two and a half kilometre boardwalk, while the Onnenai walkways are how you get inside it rather than look down on it, with the warning that there are brown bears about and you do not step off the boards: the Shiretoko rule follows you to the last stop. By canoe, the guided run from Toro to Hosooka operates April to November. What June does not have is the cranes: the spectacle in the fields at Tsurui runs October to March, and what is left here is the Akan centre, open all year with birds in an enclosure.

   The day trip hanging off Kushiro, Akan-Mashu, is tight on time and forces a choice. It fits Mashu from lookouts 1 and 3, often under fog at daybreak, the sulphur fumaroles of Iozan, sharing their car park with lookout 1, and the eighty-five-minute cruise on Lake Akan with its marimo stop. What does not fit is the ainu side done properly: Akanko Ainu Kotan is a street where some hundred and twenty people live, with their own workshops, ceremonial dance at the Ikor theatre and a night walk through the forest, which asks for a night in Akanko Onsen, at which point it stops being a day trip. This is where the thread ends: after Sapporo's explanatory room and Abashiri's academic museum, a neighbourhood people live in.

   What puts it in this route: Kushiro Marsh Observatory and loop trail