HOKKAIDO with Hiroko

Hiroko will run a Hokkaido with Hiroko with a group of 8 people up to 10.  Contact Hiroko.  Hiroko will create a catered tour for your group.

Hokkaido with Hiroko, a unique tour combining the best of the culinary and natural worlds of the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. You may have been to Japan many times; perhaps you have even joined one of Hiroko’s tours. If you have been to Japan you have probably visited Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and many other places in the country. But if you have not been to Hokkaido – all around this amazing island – you have not experienced a totally different Japan that Hiroko will bring to you. Hokkaido has a “frontier” feel. Outside of Sapporo, its only major city, it is not densely populated. That population is less than 3.5 million. Hokkaido is home to so much that is different from the rest of the country. A simple example: when you are out in the farm country, you will not see small rice paddies, but expansive fields growing wheat, corn, fruit, potatoes, cattle for beef and dairy products and most of the green vegetables found in Japan, and the barns are large buildings with colorful metal roofs. This could well be Europe or parts of America. Hokkaido has many national parks featuring nature that has not been disturbed by extensive human interference or habitation. Volcanic mountains – one less than 75 years old – and beautiful caldera lakes are separated by broad, fertile, cultivated valleys. And, of course, the best seafood in the country – fish in so many varieties, shrimp, crabs of many kinds, oysters and the famous Hokkaido uni (sea urchin) and scallops – come from its nutrition filled water that result from volcanic materials and from the mixing of nearshore cold and warm currents.

Socially, Hokkaido is very different from the rest of the country. Its original population is the Ainu. The influences of these people are everywhere in place names, foods and local customs. And they survive to this day as a community that is, with other indigenous peoples, rediscovering and cultivating its roots. Extensive settlement by outsiders did not begin until the late 19th century, and the railway network tying the island together was not completed until 1926. This comprehensive tour personally researched and arranged by Hiroko welcomes your participation in this wonderful experience available to a very limited number of participants.


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