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From the Editors
Noboribetsu's main street is called Paradise Street, and a short walk away is a valley called Hell. This issue's main story is how one steaming crater ended up with two names from two cultures, and why this month, with the hillsides turning red, is a good time to see it. Then a record El Niño is headed for Hokkaido's winter, so we look at what the forecast says about Sapporo's snow, and why a milder outlook still leaves room for a heavy storm. We also cover the new downtown tower that Sapporo had to build twice. There's a trivia question waiting in the middle of the issue, about the red-brick landmark next door.
Day Trip
Hell Valley Is Steps From a Street Called Paradise
Noboribetsu's main street is named Gokuraku-dori, Paradise Street. A short walk away is a valley called Hell.
The valley lives up to the name. Steam pours out of bare orange and grey rock, the air smells like sulfur before you see a single vent, and boiling water breaks through the ground wherever it likes. The photos I took there look like a film set. This month is a good time to go, because the hillsides around the crater are turning red.
A crater that's still working
Jigokudani is the scar of an explosive eruption in the Kuttara volcanic area about 10,000 years ago. Sources credit different peaks within that area, so the exact culprit depends on who you ask. The crater is roughly 450 meters across and covers about 11 hectares, and it's still venting. It holds 15 named "hells," with the Great Hell at the center, and it's the largest source for Noboribetsu Onsen's springs.
Across the whole resort, the springs produce about 10,000 tons of hot water a day, in nine different spring types. That variety is rare anywhere in the world, and it earns Noboribetsu its nickname: the department store of hot springs.
Before it was hell, it was a river
Noboribetsu is an Ainu name, from nupur-pet, usually translated as a cloudy or murky river. It describes the mineral-stained water running down from the springs above town.
The word may carry more than a color. Nupur turns up elsewhere in Ainu vocabulary tied to the supernatural. The Ainu linguist Chiri Mashiho recorded nupur-kur, roughly "a being charged with supernatural power," so some read the name as a river marked as spiritually significant. What's firmly documented is the use: the Ainu bathed in these springs for healing for generations before any Japanese settler built a bathhouse here.
Then hell arrived
The "hell" half comes from Japanese Buddhism. Jigoku, the Buddhist hells, arrived in Japan with Buddhism, and Shinto has a land of the dead but no tradition of hell as punishment. Whoever first looked at a valley of boiling, hissing, sulfur-reeking ground and thought of a demon's home was borrowing Buddhist vocabulary.
Noboribetsu leans into it. On Gokuraku-dori, a hall houses an animatronic Enma, the Buddhist king of hell who judges the dead. He stands about six meters tall, and several times a day his face turns red and he delivers a "Judgment of Hell" that runs about five minutes. The figure was built in 1993 for the 30th Hell Festival, held every year on the last weekend of August. The 63rd ran August 29 and 30. In the legend behind it, the lid on Hell's cauldron opens once a year and Enma comes to town, led by the Yukijin, the demon guardians of the hot springs. Through the summer, the Yukijin also set off eruption-style fireworks up to about eight meters high at Jigokudani. Those are ticketed, run on set nights from June to September, and return next year.
Two cultures with two names and one valley. The Ainu named it for the water and used it to heal. The Buddhist framing named it for fire and fear. Both names are still in use today, one for the town and the other for the valley.
Go this month
The color. As of October 7, Weathernews had the area at about 20%, with the peak forecast from around October 23 and leaves dropping from around November 4. The usual window is mid to late October, and in 2024 the peak landed October 26 to 30. Mountain ash and Japanese sumac turn red around the crater and nearby Oyunuma, and the grass along the valley path goes red at the stem.
The walk. The loop walkway through the valley is about 568 meters and takes roughly ten minutes, climbing to a viewing deck over the vents. Paths continue to Oyunuma, a pond whose surface sits around 40 to 50°C, and a natural foot bath is nearby, so bring a towel. The visitor center at the entrance has current conditions. After dark, footlights along the walkway, called Onibi no Michi, the Path of Ghost Fires, are listed as lit from sunset to 9:30 p.m.
Getting there. From Sapporo, the limited express Hokuto or Suzuran reaches Noboribetsu Station in about 75 minutes, with trains roughly every hour. A Donan Bus covers the last stretch to the onsen in about 15 minutes, and the valley is about a 10-minute walk from the bus terminal. A direct bus from Sapporo Station takes around an hour and fifty minutes, but it's reservation-only.
Before you soak
Wash and rinse at the shower stool before you get into the bath. Keep the small towel out of the water, keep your voice low, and leave your phone in the locker.
On tattoos, many onsen unfortunately still restrict them. Daiichi Takimotokan, one of Noboribetsu's biggest bathhouses, is widely reported in visitor accounts as tattoo-friendly. We couldn't find the hotel's own policy, so call ahead or take your chances.
🎯 HOKKAIDO TRIVIA
Sapporo's red-brick Former Hokkaido Government Building, which stands beside the new Link Tower, was built in 1888 and modeled on a state house in the United States. Which state?
A) New York
B) Massachusetts
C) Pennsylvania
D) Michigan
Keep reading. The answer's waiting for you at the bottom of this issue.
A Record El Niño Meets a Sapporo Winter
On October 9th, Japan's weather agency said this year's El Niño has become the strongest on record and should last through winter. September's ocean temperature in the monitored zone ran 4.0°C above baseline, the highest since records began in 1949.
For Sapporo, the official outlook leans milder. The Sapporo Regional Headquarters' winter forecast, issued September 18, gives December to February temperatures 40% odds of normal and 40% odds of above normal, against 20% for below. Snowfall on Hokkaido's Japan Sea side, where Sapporo sits, is forecast at normal or below. October to December is expected to run warmer than usual across the island, so autumn should hang on a little longer. The reasoning is that El Niño winters tend to weaken the winter winds that push cold air and snow across the Japan Sea.
Snow still has a say
Forecasters caution that cold snaps can still deliver sudden, local heavy snow, especially early in winter. The history is mixed, too. According to one Hokkaido ski blogger's analysis of JMA data, Hokkaido-wide snowfall from December to February came in at 89% of normal in the record El Niño winter of 1997-98 and 99% in 2015-16, but 108% in 1982-83, another very strong El Niño year. In Sapporo itself, 2015-16 brought 428 centimeters against the 479 centimeter average, and the first snow arrived on October 25.
What it means
Plan for a gentler winter that still has snow in it. Even a 10% dip leaves Sapporo with more than four meters of snow. Ski blogs flag the early season as the main worry, since the warm stretch lands in October to December.
The Tower Sapporo Built Twice
On October 3rd, a 26-story tower opened beside the red-brick Former Hokkaido Government Building, more than two years behind schedule. Urbannet Sapporo Link Tower was due to be finished in February 2024. It was completed in June 2026 and opened to the public in stages this fall.
The delay came from the steel. Construction began in October 2021 on the site of the old Hokkaido Broadcasting headquarters. In March 2023, with the frame already 15 floors high, the contractor, Taisei, disclosed that steel erection accuracy fell short of standards. The above-ground structure was taken down and rebuilt, and completion slipped 28 months.
What's inside
The upper floors, 17 to 26, hold Hyatt Centric Sapporo, the city's first Hyatt, with 216 rooms. It's the second Hyatt-brand hotel in Hokkaido, after Park Hyatt Niseko Hanazono. Below it are offices and a startup-support base, and a commercial base from the basement to the second floor that opened in stages between September 1 and October 3. The tenants include a Hokkaido wine bar called Ezo no Shizuku to Ate, a ramen restaurant called Q, a fish-and-chips shop, a seafood izakaya, a hamburg steak restaurant, a sushi counter, curry udon, and a branch of the kissaten Miyanomori Coffee. The hotel's Matsu Grill & Bar takes reservations.
Getting there
It's a 6-minute walk from Odori Station and a 10-minute walk from JR Sapporo Station, in the same few blocks as THE BUTTER, which we featured recently.
See you out there. · また木曜日に。
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🎯 Trivia answer: B) Massachusetts
The building's designer, Hokkaido government engineer Hirai Seijiro, was among the first Japanese students the Education Ministry sent to study in the United States, and he trained at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. Back in Hokkaido, he gave the new government headquarters an American neo-baroque design modeled on the Massachusetts State House. About 2.5 million bricks made in nearby villages cover its walls, and it served as the seat of Hokkaido's government for roughly 80 years.