One of Hokkaido's 179 towns
Nishiokoppe西興部村
A thousand people, orange roofs and a wooden-toy museum
Okhotsk region · Drift ice in winter, wilderness gateways all year.
Nishiokoppe, a forest village of a thousand people with matching orange roofs, runs a wooden-toy wonderland museum deep in the woods.
Nishiokoppe is a village of about a thousand people in the forested upper valley of the Okoppe River, between the coast and Nayoro, and one of the smallest municipalities in Hokkaido. Nearly all of it is forest. The village decided long ago to make something of that: the houses in the centre are roofed in the same orange, there is a museum devoted to wooden toys, a village-run lodge, and a managed hunting reserve for deer. Come on the way across from the Soya line to the Okhotsk coast, and stay a night if you like silence.
- Region
- Okhotsk (オホーツク)
- From New Chitose Airport
- ~268 km · 4.1 h summer / 4.9 h winter
- From Sapporo
- ~254 km · 3.9 h summer / 4.6 h winter
- Best season in Okhotsk
- Late January–March for drift ice; May–October for Shiretoko's lakes, falls and wildlife.
Nishiokoppe 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 Nishiokoppe
Komu wooden-toy museum
森の美術館「木夢」
A village museum filled with wooden toys, puzzles and play structures made from local timber, where children are meant to touch everything. The unlikeliest thing to find in a village this size, and the reason families detour here.
The orange-roofed village
オレンジ屋根の集落
The centre of the village agreed on one roof colour decades ago, and the result is a cluster of orange roofs against dark forest that looks planned in a way almost nowhere in rural Hokkaido does. Best from the hill above.
Forest and the upper Okoppe River
森と興部川の上流
Nearly all of the village is forest, and the upper Okoppe River runs through it past the centre. Forest roads lead out from the village into the trees, deer are a common sight at dusk, and the village-run lodge makes an overnight easy.
Getting to Nishiokoppe
Route 239 is the only road, running from Nayoro on the JR Soya Main Line east to Okoppe on the coast; the village is roughly an hour from Nayoro and half an hour from Okoppe. Monbetsu Airport is a little over an hour by car. There is no railway in the village and buses are few.
Okhotsk region: Fly into Memanbetsu Airport for Abashiri and Shiretoko's west side; drift-ice season adds special trains and buses.
When to visit Nishiokoppe
June to September, when the forest is green, the roads are clear and the toy museum and the village lodge make an easy overnight. October colours the whole valley. Winter is very cold and snowy, but the village lodge stays open and the silence is complete.
What to eat in Nishiokoppe
Venison is the village specialty, from the managed deer population of the surrounding forest, served at the lodge and sold processed. Dairy from the few farms in the valley, mountain vegetables and mushrooms in season, and wood products rather than food are what most people take home.
Nishiokoppe in context: the Okhotsk region
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Every winter, the Sea of Okhotsk performs one of the natural world's great spectacles on this coast: drift ice, sailing down from the north until the horizon turns white. Icebreaker cruises push through it from Abashiri and Monbetsu — an only-here experience in all of Japan.