World Heritage Site

It has been a long, hot summer in Japan this year. It still affected Hokkaido’s Shiretoko NP when I visited in early September – with daily temperatures of about 26 degrees, it wasn’t what I had expected. No mist and clouds, and it looked more like Central Sweden during Midsummer than a place notorious for its seasonal sea ice. 

Before going, it is important to understand which of the ‘seasons’ you’re in: this strongly affects which activities you can do and what animals you might see. There’s the ‘Drift Ice Season’ (mid-January to early March), the ‘Bear Active Season’ (May-July) and the ‘Eco Preservation Awareness Season’ (August to mid-November). Outside these tourist months, everything will be closed and roads are impassable due to snow. I flew into Memanbetsu Airport and rented a car from there (it’s a 1.5h drive). You can also get around on public transport but there aren’t many buses a day.

In September, the main trail at the Shiretoko Five Lakes can be walked independently (in ‘Bear Active Season’ you may not). You do need to get a permit though at the Shiretoko Goko Field House (costing a nominal 250 yen) and they make you attend a 13-minute presentation about the do’s and don’ts in the forest, and especially how to behave around bears (Don’t run!). The 3km long hike mostly follows a trail through the forest, which occasionally opens up for each of the five lakes. Several of the Japanese hikers that set off at the same time as I wore bear bells, so that probably scared the bears away if there were any present at all. Bears had been seen about every other day in August and September along this trail. During my hike, I only saw deer twice. The trail ends at the exemplary elevated wooden boardwalk, which entails the shorter hike you can do here.

A few km southward, a short trail leads from the Nature Center (one of the many interpretation / visitor centers of the park) to Furepe Waterfall. This is a fine hike in a more open setting than the one at Five Lakes. It provides good views of the higher mountains inland. The waterfall itself may be disappointing at first, as it trickles out of a crack fed by underground water from snow and rain (resembling “flowing tears”). However, the cliff has a steep drop of 60m into the Sea of Okhotsk.

In the evening, from 7.30-9.30 pm, I joined a Wildlife Night Drive with a company called Picchio. In a minivan, kitted out with binoculars and spotlights, we slowly drove the roads around the Nature Center and the Five Lakes access searching for animals. We quickly did find a young deer (a ‘Bambi’ also in Japanese), and later on a fox. We went looking for bears near the river, where the guide said they start coming this time of the year to eat the salmon. But we didn’t find one, and neither could we spot an owl. 

The next morning I drove the Shiretoko Pass to the other, eastern side of the peninsula. But not before I had made a little detour to the road which according to last night’s guide is best for bears in this season; it’s the road signposted to the onsen, parallel to Iwaubetsu River. Unfortunately, I came up empty (again). Driving the Shiretoko Pass isn’t anything spectacular this time of the year (it’s closed because of heavy snow from November to March). From the parking lot at the top, there’s an impressive view of Mount Rausu and the islands ‘floating on the clouds’ in the distance. I drove to the town of Rausu and then north on the coastal road, but this area isn’t nearly as developed for tourism as the Utoro side of the park. There are mostly fishermen’s villages. 

My final act for Shiretoko was joining one of the boat tours along the coast from Utoro. The tours are conducted in the open waters of the Sea of Okhotsk, which are often rough, and the coastline is very rocky. Over 50% of the cruises were cancelled during my first 2 days. Since the disastrous boating accident in 2022, where 26 people died, the operators may even have become more careful before sailing out. I had booked a 2h15 long tour with Aurora to Rutsha Bay at 9.15 am on my last morning. Not just to see a bit of the coastline, but also for the last opportunity to spot a bear: they like to visit Rutsha Bay (the company advertises an 87% success rate of spotting one). Well - my fate was the same as that of Randi & Svein Elias a year earlier: the boat turned around well before it reached its final destination. In this case, after about 35 minutes. We still got to see the funny rocks and caves included in the regular short tour, but we were back at the port an hour early (and got a partial refund).

Overall, Shiretoko is a pleasant national park that doesn’t present its unique qualities easily. It has a fascinating ecosystem where sea ice, phytoplankton, krill, salmons and bears play their part, but it is hard to witness this in action.