The Latest Breaking News from Hokkaido

Japan's coast guard used aircraft and patrol boats on Saturday to search for a tour boat with 26 people on board after it sent word it was in trouble off the northern island of Hokkaido, a coast guard official said.

Japanese fisherman Tsuruyuki Hansaku was barely out of high school when he served 10 months in a Soviet prison, arrested at sea on his father's boat for catching cod in what the Russians considered their territory.

The government's tourism support program, a pandemic economy-boosting measure which had been limited to travel by residents within a prefecture or to neighboring prefectures, was expanded to regional blocs such as the Hokkaido, Tohoku and Kanto regions starting April 1.

As a fruit normally found in the subtropics grows in Tokyo, peaches are cultivated in Aomori, the prefecture known as "the apple kingdom."

In Europe, Lexus will offer 40 coupes and 40 convertibles of this special edition.

Work to dry Pacific cod in cold outdoor weather is fully underway in Wakkanai, Hokkaido. A local specialty called bodara is made by drying cod both indoors and outdoors, exposing it to cold winds and sunlight from autumn to spring until there is no moisture left inside. The fish shrinks…

An ice-breaking pleasure boat opens up a route through drifting slabs of ice about 4 kilometers off the coast of Monbetsu, Hokkaido, on Saturday. Hokkaido has been hit by records snowfalls this winter, but on the day, the temperature climbed steadily thanks to warm winds from the south. Passengers on…

Japanese yellowtail fishing grounds have undergone a dramatic shift in recent years. Hokkaido, which previously registered next to no catches, registered the nation's largest annual yellowtail haul in 2020, while Toyama and Niigata prefectures, traditionally known for their winter yellowtail, continue to register poor catches.

WAKKANAI, Hokkaido -- Loco Solare, Japan's national women's curling team at the Beijing Winter Olympics, frequently visited Hokkaido's northernmost city of Wakkanai for training camps and curling events.

Farmers dig cabbages out from the snow in Wassamu, Hokkaido, to prepare shipments of the town's specialty food. The cabbages were harvested last autumn and laid out in a field to be buried under the snow. After fresh powder covers the vegetables and the outside temperature falls below freezing, the…

Illuminated ice sculptures create a fantastical atmosphere in extremely cold weather at the Ice Fall Festival in Kamikawa, Hokkaido. Visitors have their temperature checked at the entrance to the venue, which contains 30 sculptures of various sizes, each reminiscent of a frozen waterfall. "I came to the nearby Sounkyo district…