The Most Beautiful Places in Hokkaidō
6 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Hokkaidō are Goryōkaku, Lake Mashū and Shiretoko Goko. The list covers 6 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Hokkaidō, Japan's northernmost main island, feels different from the rest of the country. Its winters are long and snowy, its volcanoes have left caldera lakes, and the Sea of Okhotsk brings drift ice to its northeastern coast. The island was the homeland of the Ainu and was settled widely by Japanese farmers only from the Meiji era, so open fields, straight roads and wide landscapes replace the crowded valleys of the south.
In the east, Lake Mashū fills a volcanic caldera with exceptionally clear water, often hidden by fog rising off its steep walls. On the Shiretoko Peninsula, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Shiretoko Goko are five small lakes in forest beneath a line of volcanic peaks. Near Biei, the Blue Pond owes its vivid colour to minerals in the water, which carries aluminium-rich particles that scatter blue light.
The island's farms and modern history add other forms of beauty. In Furano, Farm Tomita spreads stripes of lavender and other flowers across the slopes of a valley. In Hakodate, Goryōkaku is a five-pointed star fort of Western design, completed in the 1860s and the scene of the last battles of the Boshin War. In Lake Nukabira, the concrete arches of the Taushubetsu River Bridge, built for a railway later abandoned, appear and disappear as the reservoir's water level rises and falls.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Goryōkaku | Star fort | |
| 2 | Lake Mashū | Volcanic crater lake | |
| 3 | Shiretoko Goko | Lake | |
| 4 | Farm Tomita | Urban park | |
| 5 | Blue Pond | Lake | |
| 6 | Taushubetsu River Bridge | Abandoned railway |
01 Goryōkaku
Japan · 1.4 km from Hakodate41.797° N 140.757° E
Keihin nike · CC BY-SA 3.0 Goryōkaku is Japan's great star fort: a five-pointed citadel of ramparts and water in the middle of Hakodate, designed so that each bastion covers its neighbours with gunfire.
Did you know? The moat is up to about 30 metres wide and some 1.8 km around; it was originally fed through buried wooden pipes from the Kameda River about a kilometre away.
02 Lake Mashū
Japan43.583° N 144.517° E
Miya.m · CC BY-SA 3.0 Lake Mashū sits at the bottom of a caldera in eastern Hokkaido, ringed by crater walls that drop about 200 metres to the water on every side.
Did you know? Sockeye salmon and rainbow trout live in the lake today, but both species were introduced by people.
03 Shiretoko Goko
Japan44.126° N 145.081° E
663highland · CC BY 2.5 Five small lakes lie scattered through a primeval forest on the Shiretoko Peninsula, at the northeastern tip of Hokkaido, with the jagged volcanic ridge of the Shiretoko mountains reflected in their surfaces.
Did you know? An electric fence charged at around 7,000 volts runs the full length of the boardwalk to keep brown bears off it.
04 Farm Tomita
Japan · 37.5 km from Asahikawa43.419° N 142.427° E
t-konno · CC BY-SA 3.0 In high summer the gentle slopes of Farm Tomita turn violet, row after row of lavender running towards the Tokachi volcanic range on the horizon, while next to them long parallel bands of other flowers stripe the hillside in contrasting colours.
Did you know? The farm's grounds are divided into seven named flower fields, each planted to a different seasonal or colour theme.
05 Blue Pond
Japan · 34.6 km from Asahikawa43.494° N 142.614° E
MaedaAkihiko · CC BY-SA 4.0 In a forest near Biei in central Hokkaido, dead larch and birch trunks stand upright in water of a milky, almost unreal turquoise. The Blue Pond — Aoi-ike, also known as the Shirogane Blue Pond — looks like a natural wonder, but it is an accident of flood engineering.
Did you know? Nobody officially named the pond: 'Blue Pond' simply caught on by word of mouth among photographers.
06 Taushubetsu River Bridge
Japan43.416° N 143.189° E
Chatama · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Taushubetsu River Bridge is a string of concrete arches standing in the middle of Lake Nukabira in the mountains of Hokkaido's Tokachi region, and it is famous precisely because it does not always exist.
Did you know? In 2010 JR Hokkaido named the old Shihoro Line arch bridges, Taushubetsu among them, a quasi-railway monument.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Hokkaidō?
- On our list, Goryōkaku ranks first, followed by Lake Mashū and Shiretoko Goko.
- Why is the Blue Pond in Biei blue?
- Water from nearby springs carries minerals, including aluminium compounds, that form fine particles in the pond. These scatter blue light, giving the water its unusual colour.
- What is Goryōkaku?
- It is a star-shaped fort in Hakodate, designed on European models and completed in the 1860s. In 1869 it was the last stronghold of the forces that resisted the new Meiji government.
- Why does the Taushubetsu Bridge disappear?
- The bridge stands in Lake Nukabira, a reservoir created by a dam. When the water level rises, the arches are submerged, and they reappear when the reservoir is drawn down.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Hokkaidō?
- In our collection, the places in Hokkaidō are most often lakes (2), crater lakes (1), city parks (1) and star forts (1).
- How many places are on this list in Hokkaidō?
- The list covers 6 places.