One of Hokkaido's 179 towns
Nakashibetsu中標津町
The airport town with a 330-degree horizon
Nemuro region · The wild east — famed first sunrise, last frontier.
Nakashibetsu's Kaiyodai lookout serves a 330-degree horizon of dairy grid-fields — eastern Hokkaido's airport town and milkland capital.
Nakashibetsu is the service town of the Nemuro region, inland on the Konsen plateau where the eastern Hokkaido airport lands. The land around it is a huge dairy grid: pastures divided by straight shelterbelt forests that show up as lines from the air, and a ridge called Kaiyodai where the view runs almost all the way round. Most travellers pass through on the way to Shiretoko or Notsuke, but it is worth a night for the hot springs on the Shibetsu river and the Milk Road at dusk.
- Region
- Nemuro (根室)
- From New Chitose Airport
- ~366 km · 5.6 h summer / 6.6 h winter
- From Sapporo
- ~389 km · 6 h summer / 7.1 h winter
- Best season in Nemuro
- Summer for whales and green pastures, deep winter for sea eagles and drift ice on the strait.
Nakashibetsu at a glance
Drive estimates: straight-line × 1.35, at 65 km/h (summer) / 55 km/h (winter). How we calculate
What to see in Nakashibetsu
Kaiyodai lookout
開陽台
A low hill north of town with an observation building on top and an unbroken 330-degree view over the dairy plain to the Shiretoko mountains and the strait. At night the sky is dark enough for the Milky Way; there is a campsite below.
Milk Road
ミルクロード
The straight road that runs from town up to Kaiyodai, a dead-straight strip of asphalt between pastures with the Shiretoko range at the end. Named for the tanker trucks that use it, and the region's signature driving photo.
Yoroushi Onsen
養老牛温泉
A small hot-spring settlement on the upper Shibetsu river, in forest below Mt. Musa. Quiet riverside baths, and the woods are known for Blakiston's fish owl, the huge owl that fishes the river at night.
Shelterbelt grid
格子状防風林
The whole plateau is divided by straight bands of forest planted to break the wind, forming a grid visible from any high point and from the aircraft window on the way in. It is the landscape that defines the region.
Getting to Nakashibetsu
Nakashibetsu Airport is in the town itself, with flights from Sapporo and Tokyo, about 10 minutes by car from the centre. National Route 272 leads to Kushiro in about two hours and Route 243 to Bihoro and the Okhotsk side. No railway serves the town. Sapporo is about six hours by car.
Nemuro region: Fly to Nakashibetsu Airport or drive east from Kushiro. Distances are big; plan unhurried days.
When to visit Nakashibetsu
June to September, when the pastures are green, the view from Kaiyodai is clearest and the road over Shiretoko Pass is open. Autumn brings colour to the shelterbelts. Winter is very cold and clear, good for starry nights and the fish-owl forests, but drive carefully on the plateau.
What to eat in Nakashibetsu
Dairy first: milk, soft-serve ice cream, cheese and yoghurt from the surrounding farms, and beef from the same pastures. From the nearby coast come salmon, scallops and kelp. Potatoes and root vegetables grow on the plateau, and the town's name is attached to a pale, mild-tasting cheese.
Nakashibetsu in context: the Nemuro region
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Nemuro is where Japan runs out — and where Hokkaido feels wildest. Cape Nosappu is famed as the spot that greets the country's earliest sunrise; the impossibly thin Notsuke Peninsula curls into the sea past ghost forests of dead trees; sea eagles patrol the winter coast and dairy pastures roll inland as far as sight.