Hokkaido wildlife in Japan

Save, perhaps, for Tokyo’s crows, if you go to Japan as a regular sightseeing tourist you might not see much of its nature. You might ring bells as you walk on the Nakasendo Trail to warn Asiatic black bears that you are coming through – but you probably won’t see one.

Japan, famously home to the world’s largest metropolitan area, experienced a 20^th century replete with rapid urbanisation. Today, you’ll see riverbanks secured with cement and coasts shored up with concrete. Most rivers are dammed. Satoshi Tajiri, the Japanese creator of Pokemon, grew up wanting to be an entomologist. He made the famous game in part so that he could give children the feeling of bug hunting without the bugs in their increasingly concreted environments.

All this would lead you to believe that there’s very little wildlife. Think again. “Japan is not very well known for its wildlife,” says Martin Royle, from our expert wildlife partner Royle Safaris. “But that is possibly the biggest mistake people can make when thinking of travelling here.”

For all the urbanisation there’s a strong interest in the natural world in Japan – each seasonal change is marked with celebration. The country was home to the longest running natural history column written by a single author in a newspaper ever written – Wild Watch, which ran for 33 years in The Japan Times. Even the concreted rivers have in-built shelters to protect the country’s endemic giant salamander.

Southern Japan is better known for endemic wildlife, but Hokkaido has the beauty of snow: it first settles in November and makes for a canvas for animal footprints, the pop of a Ezo red fox or the glimpse of a Siberian flying squirrel.

“In my opinion, Hokkaido is the heart of wildlife watching in Japan,” says Martin. “The winter period is iconic, with dancing cranes, huge sea eagles on the broken sea ice and the world’s largest owls booming their deep call through the forests at night, Hokkaido is a wildlife watching and particularly wildlife photography hotspot.”

Leggy and loud, everyone wants to party with Hokkaido’s famous cranes. Land use change killed off the red-crowned crane’s food source, making their numbers plummet in the 20^th century. But a single farmer started feeding the remaining dozen or so and helping them thrive – there are now over a thousand living year-round in Kushiro, closely monitored by conservationists.

You can spot two species of bear in Japan – the brown bear and the Asiatic black bear. Hokkaido actually has the highest density of brown bears present in the world, meaning they are often out and about, competing for food. September is salmon month – great for a bear watching expedition where you can see them gathering at rivers.

“This is perhaps the biggest unknown when it comes to wildlife watching in Japan,” says Martin. “People know all too well about the salmon runs and the abundance of brown bears in the north-west of America and Canada but Japan has this also: it’s great to witness.”

The Stellar sea eagle has the kind of beak a child would draw – cartoonishly orange and enormous, and it pops like nothing else against the shifting sea ice. Add in a 2.5m wingspan, and the fact they like to perch on icebergs in the Sea of Okhotsk in between hunting trips, and the world’s heaviest eagle is a star attraction, best seen on boat trips in the winter months. Look out for smaller (though still very impressive) white-tailed eagles, too.