Sunagawa, Hokkaido

Along National Route 12, the confectionery shops of Sunagawa appear with a frequency that gradually registers as something deliberate. The city has organized itself around this identity — the so-called Sunagawa Sweet Road — and the shop windows, set against the broad Hokkaido sky, carry the quiet confidence of a place that found a second purpose after the coal seams ran out.

The coal industry once defined the rhythm here. Sunagawa grew through the extraction years, and the Sunagawa Power Station still burns coal today, a visible thread connecting past to present. The city's name traces back to an Ainu phrase, *Ota-ushi-nai*, and the land itself reflects that older geography: the Ishikari and Sorachi rivers converge nearby, leaving a flat terrain crossed by smaller waterways and edged with marshland.

What strikes a visitor now is the greenery. Hokkaido Kodomo no Kuni, a park planted with well over two hundred tree species, spreads across a section of the city with camping grounds and open space. The urban parks here cover an unusually generous area per resident — the kind of ratio that shapes daily life without announcing itself. Children move through the park on weekday afternoons. The Sunagawa Highway Oasis, tucked beside the expressway interchange, draws a steadier crowd of passing drivers. Between the sweets, the parks, and the coal-era infrastructure still humming at the edge of town, Sunagawa holds its contradictions without apparent effort.