Okhotskオホーツク

🧊Kitami北見市

Kitami grows Japan's onions, once supplied most of the world's mint, and has the country's densest yakiniku-restaurant culture — plus curling champions.

🧊Abashiri網走市

Abashiri means two icons: the historic prison museum and winter's drift-ice cruises — with a lake that turns coral-red with glasswort each autumn.

🧊Monbetsu紋別市

Monbetsu sends the Garinko icebreaker crunching through the pack ice all winter; a giant crab-claw sculpture guards the harbor.

🧊Bihoro美幌町

Bihoro's pass is one of Japan's great road-trip moments — the whole Kussharo caldera suddenly below your windshield.

🧊Tsubetsu津別町

Tsubetsu's mountain pass terrace floats above a sea of clouds over Lake Kussharo on lucky mornings — a forestry town gone quietly cool.

🐻Shari斜里町

Gateway to Shiretoko, the UNESCO World Heritage peninsula with one of Japan's densest brown bear populations. Drift ice walks in February, waterfall hikes in summer.

🧊Kiyosato清里町

Kiyosato (Okhotsk) distills potato shochu and guards Kaminoko Pond — a hidden pool of impossible cobalt fed by Mt. Shari's springs.

🧊Koshimizu小清水町

Koshimizu's coastal flower garden blooms wild between the Okhotsk Sea and a swan-filled lagoon — best crossed by the little seasonal train stop.

🧊Kunneppu訓子府町

Kunneppu is onion-and-melon farm country with a local secret: soy-glazed katsudon that locals will argue is the region's best.

🧊Oketo置戸町

Oketo turns its forests into Oke-Craft — pale, feather-light woodenware beloved by Japanese design shops.

🧊Saroma佐呂間町

Saroma raises fat scallops and oysters in Lake Saroma, Japan's third-largest lake, and hosts the country's most storied 100km ultramarathon.

🧊Engaru遠軽町

Engaru plants ten million cosmos flowers on its Sun Hill each autumn, watched over by the great Ganbo Rock.

🧊Yubetsu湧別町

Yubetsu's tulip park erupts into 200 varieties every May — a Dutch postcard scene on the Okhotsk coast.

🧊Takinoue滝上町

Takinoue carpets a whole hillside in pink moss phlox each May and leads Japan in true Japanese mint — the town smells faintly of it.

🧊Okoppe興部町

Okoppe is a dairy town whose butter and cheese have a cult following — and a rider-house in an old train car for touring cyclists.

🧊Nishiokoppe西興部村

Nishiokoppe, a forest village of a thousand people with matching orange roofs, runs a wooden-toy wonderland museum deep in the woods.

🧊Omu雄武町

Omu lands hairy crab and autumn salmon on the northern Okhotsk, with a lighthouse cape famous for sunrise over the ice floes.

🧊Ozora大空町

Ozora holds Memanbetsu Airport, sunflower fields and the Merhen Hill — seven larches on a ridge that every camera in eastern Hokkaido knows.