Wakkanai, Hokkaido (EN)

I am in Wakkanai, on Japan’s Hokkaido Island. Soya Misaky is a few kilometers a few kilometers away from where I will spend the night, it’s the northernmost point of Japan. In a clear day, you can see from there the Island of Sakhalin, Russian territory in this portion of the Pacific Ocean slashed by the winds and frost during the cold winters.

Wakkanai is a border post, in the most classic and extreme sense: until a few years ago, its historical economic vocation was strictly based on fishing, then we have started to see an interesting and promising tourism industry. Covid has, obviously, swept away everything, and still now he place is struggling to restart, given also the waves of infection following one another.

Meeting a foreigner, and mostly a big and bald one, with a camera dangling from his neck, is a rare sight.

English is less spoken here than Russian: even the road signs are bilingual, testifying a dense commercial and cultural exchange that unites the two frozen extremes of their respective Countries. The only thing at the restaurant that they managed to say was “cash”, when I pulled out my credit card to pay off the cornucopia of sashimi and the couple of beers that was my meal to before the sun went down, reminding me that I’m north far enough, and light here is a scarce commodity.

Driving the car I rented is an easy job, apart from starting the windshield wipers every time I have to turn on the indicator. As you can well imagine the traffic is not particularly intense: in fact, I struggle to define “traffic” having less than 10 other cars in the 40 kilometers I have driven so far in this area. The encounter with the Ezo deer, who live here free and not at all disturbed by the human presence, is an emotion. I was suggested to approach them with the potato biscuits typical of this city.

My host are amazing, and exquisitely kind: I will manage to make a good night sleep on my tatami, and booked my bathroom/onsen for early tomorrow morning: planning to have raw sea urchin for breakfast before starting what is planned to be a full day of drive south. Easy choice, if you want to go north you better be ready to swim in the cold waters on the traight, and then explain Russian Immigration why you are getting ashore there.