Oshima渡島

🌃Hakodate函館市

A port town of slopes, red-brick warehouses and a night view regularly ranked among Japan's best. The morning seafood market alone justifies the shinkansen ride.

🌉Hokuto北斗市

Hokuto is where the shinkansen arrives in Hokkaido — with a silent Trappist monastery avenue and coastal fields facing Hakodate across the bay.

🌉Matsumae松前町

Matsumae is Japan's northernmost castle town — 250 varieties of cherry trees bloom around the keep, and the local kelp-squid pickle bears its name.

🌉Fukushima福島町

Fukushima town dries more surume squid than anywhere in Japan and raised two yokozuna — sumo pride runs deep on this strait-facing shore.

🌉Shiriuchi知内町

Shiriuchi grows Hokkaido's famous thick garlic chives and farms oysters where the Tsugaru Strait current runs fast.

🌉Kikonai木古内町

Kikonai greets the shinkansen at Hokkaido's first stop and purifies itself each January with an icy sea ritual centuries old.

🌉Nanae七飯町

Nanae holds Onuma Quasi-National Park — islet-dotted lakes under Mt. Komagatake — and claims the birthplace of Western farming and the Danshaku potato.

🌉Shikabe鹿部町

Shikabe's geyser blows every ten minutes beside the fishing port — steam your own seafood at the roadside station's hot-spring kitchen.

🌉Mori森町

Mori invented ikameshi — squid stuffed with rice, the king of station bento — beneath the sharp silhouette of Mt. Komagatake.

🌉Yakumo八雲町

Yakumo is the only town in Japan facing two seas — Volcano Bay and the Japan Sea — and the birthplace of Hokkaido's carved wooden bears.

🌉Oshamambe長万部町

Oshamambe means crab rice — the kanimeshi bento sold at its junction station since steam-train days — plus a storied radium hot spring in the hills.