Several times this past week I ventured outside my normal Sapporo city birding hot-spots and headed south by southeast to one of the better Ramsar wetlands maintained by the Wild Bird Society of Japan. For my fellow non-car possessing Hokkaido-ites, here’s a walk through of my trip(s) to the Lake Utonai Sanctuary: After a 5:00 […]
Caveat… Obviously if you are unemployed and left destitute by your situation then you may not agree with title of this post. But if you find yourself with the opportunity (a working spouse whose given you leeway to decompress), quit that abyssal dead-end job and don’t look back. That is where I currently stand and […]
Ah yes. The cool Hokkaido summers. Where temperatures stay pleasant and mild. No need for air conditioning. No humidity. These lies still get pushed upon us. Those lies gave us an Olympic Marathon and the ridiculousness of the Run-Walk. (Come on. This is a sport?) These lies kill quite a few elderly people up here. […]
This past year I explored the trails and waters around Heiwa Waterfall quite a lot. I took the trail up the backside of Mt. Teine in early summer and caught iwana (Arctic Char) above the waterfall on both bait (salmon eggs) and hand tied tenkara flies. I even did some low-level stream climbing (sawanobori) to […]
We still managed to get out there and do some camping this summer, despite COVID running roughshod over many cities on Honshu. Not gonna lie, it is worrying. But up here in Hokkaido life goes on, and so do our yearly trips south of Obihiro to Snow Peak’s Tokachi Poroshiri campground. This year’s trip did […]
We decided to head three hours north to escape this year’s mild Sapporo winter and try out some ice fishing on Lake Shumarinai. This was unknown territory for everyone in our group, so we had the facilities at the lake set us up with a rental tent, simple rods, and bait. Our main objective would […]
Most of the my time fishing, in terms of quantity of fish landed, is a utter disappointment here in Hokkaido. Several years back I did get into the high teens on my yamame count out near Akaigawa, west of Sapporo. But most of those were fingerlings barely worthy of that description. I was dying for […]
It came and then it went. The snow began falling pretty heavily last weekend. It looked like an early start to snowshoeing season. I planned out my winter routes, prepared my Tubbs Wilderness snowshoes, got my gaiters ready – very exciting! But just as it has been in the past, this snowfall was a short […]
Autumn has really settled in here in Sapporo. I’ve been eyeing up my snowshoes. First snows could be only a few weeks away. More likely around Christmas time, but one can always hope. In the meantime, we are stuck with consistent rain and temperatures hovering around 5 Celsius. In the early morning. If we do […]