Sobetsu, Hokkaido

Steam still rises from the ground at Showa-Shinzan — a dome of lava that pushed itself up through a farmer's wheat field during the war years, watched and recorded in meticulous diagrams by a local postmaster named Mimatsu. That act of quiet documentation is preserved in the Mimatsu Masao Memorial Hall, where the graphs trace the mountain's daily growth like a fever chart. The volcano is private land, and that fact alone gives it a different quality than a national monument: something personal, almost accidental, sitting at the edge of the road.

Usu-zan rises behind it, still active, still watched. Between the two mountains and the southeastern shore of Lake Toya, the town of Sobetsu occupies a strip of volcanic landscape that also happens to grow apples — the orchards producing fruit and, in the roadside stalls, apple cider doughnuts alongside the bear-shaped variety sold near the Higuma farm. The juxtaposition is ordinary and strange at once: fruit trees on geologically restless ground.

Sobetsu's two hot spring areas — Sobetsu Onsen and Bankei Onsen, both part of the Oku-Toya cluster — sit at different temperatures and different moods. Bankei, along the Osaru River, has an outdoor bath called Osaru-no-Yu. In winter, the town hosts the Showa-Shinzan International Snowball Fight, and the Hi Matsuri fire festival marks the volcanic calendar in a different register entirely. The Kusaibe and Nakadotoya lion dances belong to a still older layer of local observance, continuing without much announcement.