Bird and Nature Trip to Hokkaido, Japan - including Rebun and Rishiri islands June 23 - July 14 2019 © Sander Broström Sofia Broström (text and landscape photos) Contact: [email protected] ​ © Sander Broström (bird and mammal photos) www.sanderbrostrom.com My son and I visited Hokkaido for three weeks in 2019, the last week of June and the first two weeks of July. This is later than recommended for birding trips, but we were very satisfied with the timing - birds were still singing intensely, more than we had ever dared to dream, while there were also lots of bird chicks and intense feeding activity going on. We were very lucky with the weather, had almost no rain at all, and limited mist. During our time in the East it was quite cold, however, especially in Nemuro. The landscape is very green and lush, crisscrossed by rivers and waterways everywhere. Impressive amounts of forest and wetland have been set away as National Parks or as “Prefectural Natural Parks”. Huge forests seem to have been never logged at all, and vast areas of marshland and meadows remain uncultivated, especially in the Eastern part, and along the coasts. We planned our trip to work our way counterclockwise around the island, ending in “the middle”, i.e., Daisetsuzan, wanting to come to Kiritappu/Nemuro as early as possible, and Rebun/Rishiri/Daisetsuzan as late as possible, due to summer arriving late in these areas. We didn’t regret this, it all worked out according to plan. It was our first visit to Japan, and we came to enjoy the landscape and of course the birds and mammals, but also Japanese culture and cuisine. The aim of this report is to give some practical tips to travelers with similar aims to ours. Note that we are not listers and did not get out of our way to maximize the number of species seen. Even so, we saw basically everything we had hoped for, except for Tufted Puffin and other rare auks. Travel and airport We flew with Finnair/Japan Airlines Copenhagen - Helsinki - Nagoya - New Chitose Airport and back via Narita (Tokyo). We chose New Chitose Airport rather than Kushiro, partly to end the trip with limited driving and partly because it seemed better to rent a car in New Chitose where there was English speaking staff. Money In a lot of places, including many traditional hotels, only cash is accepted. ATMs where you can withdraw cash with a foreign credit card are run by Seven Bank (these are found mainly in Seven-Eleven stores but ​ ​ also for example at New Chitose Airport) and by Japan Post (note, however, that only large post offices ​ ​ have ATM machines). There is always a transaction fee for withdrawals, and the limit is 100.000 Yen at Seven Eleven and 50.000 Yen at JP. As it turned out, however, my bank did not allow withdrawals of 100.000 Yen, so I was limited to 50.000 wherever I went. Wifi / SIM Wifi was always present where we stayed (although not necessarily in our room) and often also in other places, such as in convenience stores. Still, we chose to get a local SIM card, after some hesitation we settled on a data-only SIM card from Sakura (https://www.sakuramobile.jp/travel) mainly due to convenient ​ ​ pickup at the post office at New Chitose airport (note that SIM cards must be pre-ordered in Japan, and cannot simply be bought when the need arises). Although a local SIM card is quite expensive and needs to be returned before leaving the country, we were very glad to have it, not least for navigation purposes. If you want to have calling capability, there is the option to use Mobal (https://www.mobal.com/japan-sim-card/) - they also offer home delivery in some ​ ​ countries (although not in Sweden). Actually using those cards for calls, however, is quite expensive - not far from the roaming costs. One thing to be aware of: despite Sakura using NTT-Docomo, reputedly the network with the best coverage in Japan, we often lost reception when in nature. Car rental and driving We rented a Toyota Passo, a small car which was suitable for our purposes and large enough since there were only two of us. The length is less than 4 meters, essential for the pricing of the ferries to Rebun and Rishiri. Ground clearance is not great but this was never really an issue (although in Onneto Rindo there is quite a lot of vegetation growing along the middle strip of the gravel roads). We chose Toyota Rent a Car mainly because they have a deal that you never pay for more than 15 days as long as the total rental period is less than one month. The service at the office was very quick and courteous, both when picking up and returning the car. No hiccups at all. You get English language documents explaining Japanese road signs and how to act in the event of various events, like accidents. Some things to be aware of: ● You MUST have an international driver’s license. Unlike our experience in many other countries here this was checked carefully. ● Like so much in Japan, the system works on trust. You book without giving a credit card, and are ​ ​ expected to cancel the booking if you change your plans. ● The car rental office is not at the airport itself, but Toyota has a shuttle operating frequently from the airport to their office which is less than ten minutes away. ● The opening hours are limited (during our visit 8 am to 11 pm) meaning that we had to return the car the evening before our early flight. ● Although they offer the option of a GPS in English, this basically means the device speaks in ​ ​ English, but most of the UI is still in Japanese. Smartphone-based navigation is thus recommended as a complement. A feature of our GPS was that it pinged every time we approached a stop sign (which does not look like stop signs in other parts of the world). ● We did not drive on toll roads (most expressways), but if you do it is possible to rent a device which allows you to drive through without stopping. Roads are generally in good condition and signage in English is good. Or rather, place names are written in Latin script, but along the roads, as everywhere else, there are loads of information given only in Japanese, but presumably this is all non-essential information. Note that speed limits are low. The Japanese themselves drive considerably above the limits but even so driving times will be much longer than you think (most especially if you use maps.me which seems to assume Western driving speeds). Most gas stations are full service, which in Japan means that not only do they fill up your car (full tank is called “mantan” in Japanese, although most seem to understand “full tank” as well) but they also clean all windows for you. Everywhere we went one could pay by cash or card. Last but not least, in Japan you drive on the left. For me, having driven on the right side all my life, this was difficult to get used to, both in the beginning and after a while when my internal rule “do the opposite to what you think” stopped working ;-) As a result I was really happy about the low speeds and highly courteous driving style of the Japanese, meaning that mistakes on my part never got serious. I can’t think of a better place to start practicing driving to the left than Japan. Ferry to Rebun & Rishiri After some hesitation we decided to bring our rental car to the islands in the Northwest. This was at considerable expense - about 41.500 Yen for the round trip Wakkanai - Rebun - Rishiri (Oshidomari) - Wakkanai (vs about 12.000 for just us) - but car rental on the islands is extremely expensive and the trip we wanted to do made a car necessary every day. We took care to rent a car less than 4 meters to keep the expense down. The ferry is run by Heartland Ferries and prices and ferry schedules are found at ://www.heartlandferry.jp/english/. The actual internet booking form is found here: ​ https://reserve.heartlandferry.jp/hlf/wrv/webmgr.php?ifc_manager=login.view&lang_kbn=2. In order to book ​ the ferry yourself (you can also do it via a travel agency) you need to be able to enter all the information on the registration plate of your rental car (4 different fields: City name, Numeric code, Kana, and Registration No.). Due to the difficulties of Japanese text entry, we solved this problem by asking the personnel at Toyota Car Rental to enter the City name (upper left on the registration plate) and the Kana (lower left on the registration plate) into a prepared document on my smartphone; we could then copy and paste from there. The price for bringing the car includes passage for the driver, you then need to pay extra for the other passenger(s). Extra passengers are not allowed in the car when boarding, but must walk onto the ferry. As it turned out, however, they didn’t mind extra passengers in the car when leaving the ferry. We were lucky with the weather and sat outside on all three journeys. Otherwise, with economy class tickets, depending on the ferry you either sit in modern Western seats or on the floor as is the traditional japanese style. Many also use this opportunity to sleep.