Shiretoko Goko
Interesting facts
- The lakes owe their existence to an eruption of nearby Mount Iō, one of the peninsula's volcanoes, several hundred thousand years ago.
- Mount Iō is known for a rare kind of eruption: in 1936 it poured roughly 200,000 tonnes of molten sulphur into the Kamuiwakka stream.
- The elevated boardwalk to the First Lake runs for about 800 metres, raised between two and five metres above the forest floor.
- An electric fence charged at around 7,000 volts runs the full length of the boardwalk to keep brown bears off it.
- Bear sightings closed the ground trails so often that in 2007 they could open for only about 98 days of the season.
- The Fourth Lake holds the largest population of silver crucian carp of all five lakes.
- Water lilies reported from the Second and Fifth Lakes turned out, on inspection, to be introduced garden water lilies rather than a native species.
- Sika deer numbers have risen so sharply that their browsing is holding back the natural regeneration of the spruce and fir forest around the lakes.
Why it is worth it
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. The Shiretoko Goko — the "Five Lakes of Shiretoko" — sit on the northwest-facing slope of the peninsula above the Sea of Okhotsk, in the town of Shari, and are counted among the Eight Views of Shiretoko.
The lakes are known simply by number, from the First Lake at the southwest end to the Fifth. The Second Lake is the largest, at about 4.8 hectares; the First covers about 2 hectares, the Third 2.4, the Fourth 1.6 and the Fifth 1.1. Only the Second and Third have streams flowing in or out: the Second drains into the Third, and a small brook carries the Third Lake's water down to the Sea of Okhotsk. The forest around them is dominated by Yezo spruce and Sakhalin fir. Until about 1966 cattle were still grazed on the far shore of the First Lake; today the woods belong to Ezo red squirrels, sika deer and brown bears.
The lakes lie at the heart of Shiretoko National Park, created in 1964, and of the Shiretoko World Heritage Site, inscribed by UNESCO in 2005 for the meeting of sea ice, ocean and land ecosystems on the peninsula. Because the lakes sit in the middle of brown-bear country, an elevated wooden boardwalk with an electric fence along it was built to carry visitors safely to an observation deck above the First Lake, with a view across the water to the mountain range. A path on the ground loops past all five lakes.
Getting there
The lakes are reached by road from Utoro, on the Shari side of the peninsula, via National Route 334 and the prefectural road to the Shiretoko Five Lakes car park. Buses run from Shiretoko-Shari Station on the JR Senmo Line, a ride of about an hour and twenty minutes. The town of Shibetsu lies about 52 km away in a straight line on the opposite coast. Nakashibetsu Airport (SHB) is about 62 km away in a straight line; Memanbetsu Airport (MMB), on the Shari side, is about 78 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Shiretoko Goko Lakes (知床五湖) are five small lakes in Shiretoko Peninsula, Hokkaidō, Japan.
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