Journey to the Yunohana and Furepe Falls on Snowshoes! Children 6 and Over Also Welcomed! (Shiretoko, Hokkaido)

The northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido boasts many tourist spots that attract countless visitors every year, including major tourist cities like Sapporo and Hakodate, beautiful hilly areas like Biei and Furano, the Shiretoko World Heritage Site, the skiing paradise of Niseko, and the popular Asahiyama Zoo.

This tour takes place in Shiretoko, on the eastern edge of Hokkaido. The island is a vast place, and you cannot see all of it in one day. In fact, a train and bus ride from Sapporo to Shiretoko takes more than half a day, which is a plane trip is usually recommended.

The Shiretoko World Natural Heritage Site

In 2005, Shiretoko was designated as a World Natural Heritage Site by UNESCO because of its vast natural beauty. There are many reasons why it received this designation.

One reason is the yearly ice drift, which starts around January, bringing rich nutrients and natural resources from Russia’s Amur River. This includes vast quantities of plankton that become food for large schools of fish, which in turn become food for seals, eagles, and other animals. Also, the salmon that eat the plankton travel upstream where they mate and die, with their bodies feeding the surrounding forest. Then the river flowing through the forest gathers those nutrients and other elements and carries them out to the sea. This food chain is one of the reasons why Shiretoko was added to the UNESCO list.

Two Waterfalls, Two Completely Different Experiences

This snowshoe tour will take you up to the Yunohana (The Man’s Tears) Falls and the Furepe (The Maiden’s Tears) Falls, located in the heart of a primeval forest. The forest path is inaccessible except in the snow season, so this is a great chance to connect with a part of nature mostly untouched by humans.

Basic Information

Price

From 5,500 yen