One of Hokkaido's 179 towns
Toyokoro豊頃町
Jewelry ice on the winter shore
Tokachi region · Hokkaido's breadbasket — big skies, gardens and food at the source.
Toyokoro's winter beach glitters with 'jewelry ice' — crystal-clear river ice polished by Pacific waves — and a lone elm tree poses in its pasture.
Toyokoro is a quiet farming and fishing town where the Tokachi River finally reaches the Pacific, south-east of Obihiro. Photographers know it for two images: jewelry ice, clear blocks of river ice polished by the waves and scattered along Otsu beach in midwinter, and a lone elm tree standing in a pasture by the river. Lagoons and long beaches line the coast, and wheat and beans fill the inland fields. It rewards travelers who plan around dawn light and cold.
- Region
- Tokachi (十勝)
- From New Chitose Airport
- ~198 km · 3 h summer / 3.6 h winter
- From Sapporo
- ~240 km · 3.7 h summer / 4.4 h winter
- Best season in Tokachi
- June–September for gardens and farm country in full growth; winter brings dry blue-sky cold and hot springs.
Toyokoro 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 Toyokoro
Jewelry ice at Otsu
大津海岸のジュエリーアイス
From mid-January to late February, ice from the Tokachi River mouth washes ashore as clear blocks, tumbled smooth by the surf and lit orange at sunrise. It sits on Otsu beach for a few weeks only.
The Harunire elm
豊頃のハルニレ
A single spreading elm, actually two trunks grown together, in a pasture beside the Tokachi River, photographed in every season and reachable by a short walk from the road.
Chobushi Lake
長節湖
A lagoon behind the dunes near Otsu with a campground and a beach, one of several coastal lakes in the town where waterfowl gather in spring and autumn.
Tokachi River mouth
十勝川河口
The end of the region's great river, where a fishing settlement at Otsu lands salmon and shishamo in autumn and the sky over the flats is enormous.
Getting to Toyokoro
Toyokoro station on the JR Nemuro Main Line is about 40 minutes from Obihiro by local train, though Otsu beach is another 30 minutes by car. National Route 38 crosses the town, and Route 336 runs along the coast. Tokachi-Obihiro Airport is about an hour by car.
Tokachi region: Fly to Tokachi-Obihiro Airport or take the JR limited express from Sapporo (about 2.5 hours). A car unlocks the garden road.
When to visit Toyokoro
Mid-January to late February for jewelry ice, best at dawn and only when the cold holds. October to November for salmon and shishamo at Otsu. Summer is cool and often foggy on the coast, pleasant for the lagoons and the elm.
What to eat in Toyokoro
Autumn salmon and shishamo from Otsu port, dried on racks along the shore. Wheat, beans, sugar beet and potatoes from the inland fields, and dairy from the pastures along the river. Simple and honest, like the town.
Toyokoro in context: the Tokachi region
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Tokachi is agricultural Hokkaido at full scale: a vast inland plain where the fields run to the horizon and much of what Japan eats is grown. Obihiro, its capital, invented butadon — the caramelized pork rice bowl — and keeps the world's only banei draft-horse racing.