Bifuka, Hokkaido

Snow accumulates here in depths that reshape the landscape entirely — the Teshio River still threading south to north through it all, indifferent to the season. Bifuka sits in the upper Kamikawa region of Hokkaido, pinched between the Teshio Mountains to the west and the Kitami Mountains to the east, its forests dense enough that logging has long been woven into the town's working life alongside dairy farming and the cultivation of soba, asparagus, and pumpkins on the flatter ground.

The name itself comes from Ainu — *piuka*, meaning a place of many stones — and Matsuura Takeshirō passed through in the mid-nineteenth century, long before the Sōya Main Line arrived and gave the town its single station. What the railway also left behind is the Miyuki Line, a branch that ran at a loss until its closure in the 1980s; the track bed now carries a trolley operated by an NPO over roughly five kilometers, a quiet, unhurried ride through the trees. Elsewhere, the Bifuka Matsuyama Wetland sits at elevation, a northernmost highland bog where alpine plants cluster in the open.

At the forest park complex called Bifuka Island, a sturgeon aquarium and a roadside station share space with a hot-spring bath fed by a chloride-bicarbonate spring. The *michi-no-eki* here holds local produce — the milk, the potatoes, the mochi rice — and has been recognized as one of Japan's water heritage sites. Winters push temperatures well below freezing, and the town carries that knowledge plainly, without drama.