Kushiro, Hokkaido

 September 2: 

We made our first landing in Japan at Kushiro, an industrial hub on the northeast corner of Hokkaido. Hokkaido is the ancestral home of the Ainu people, who had a separate culture from the Japanese communities on Honshu and other islands to the south. The Ainu were very connected to the natural world, but were absorbed by the Japanese and forced to abandon their language and culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. Recently there has been an increase in recognition and efforts to re-establish their traditions. 

We spent the morning on a hike at Kushiro Shitsugen National Park, the largest marshland in Japan ( about 4 times the size of  Manhattan) and home to the highly valued Red-crowned Crane. In the afternoon we went to the Kushiro City Museum, which had a wonderful display of Ainu artifacts, including clothing made from fish skin, bark fibers, or layers of silk. The museum bordered a lake and an inlet from the sea, so we did some birding there too. 

It is a bit unusual for a cruise ship to stop in Kushiro. We were welcomed by the community, including a send-off concert on the pier as we left this evening en route to Muroran. 

Pictured: Great Spotted Woodpecker, Ainu garment made from elm bark, Eurasian Nuthatch (white-bellied subspecies), flowers of the local monkshood, the most deadly plant in Japan.