With programs beneath snow-capped mountains and scorching springs for days, Hokkaido is the golf buddies’ journey you did not know you wanted.
Courtesy Pictures
Japan is again within the golf world’s excessive beams this week, with the PGA Tour touching down on Japanese shores for the sixth Zozo Championship. Quickly, at Accordia Golf Narashino Nation Membership outdoors Tokyo, native hero Hideki Matsuyama (and his now-famous caddie Shota Hayafuji, he of the Masters 18th-green bow) will battle the likes of Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele and defending champ Collin Morikawa.
However whereas FedEx Cup factors are being delivered, a 75-minute flight up north, on the wild island of Hokkaido, there’s a fabulous, little-known Japanese golf journey available for the remainder of us — one positive to make all golf buddies/senseis jealous.
A special form of slope ranking
Hokkaido is the northernmost island in Japan. Over 5 million folks name it house. Individuals who know Hokkaido in all probability understand it for — nicely, moreover the namesake beer of its capital metropolis Sapporo — its snowboarding. Every winter (identified domestically because the white season), Hokkaido turns into the ski mecca of Asia — when chilly wind blasts off Siberia, picks up heat Japanese air, then promptly hits Hokkaido’s mountains. Suppose the lake impact on a gargantuan scale. Between 45 and 50 ft of snowfall per 12 months — over 500 inches of deep, dry powder sitting at such low elevations, even green-run-relegated inexperienced persons can expertise it. Such Michelin-starred snow introduced the Winter Olympics to Sapporo in 1972, and every December it nonetheless brings skiers scuttling to Hokkaido’s resorts like surfers to Tahiti’s Teahupo’o’s break.
However through the summer time and fall months (the inexperienced season), Hokkaido is a golfer’s paradise. There are 150 golf programs on the island, views to cease Shinkansen bullet trains, plus a temperate local weather that could be a welcome reduction from different extra sweltering components of Japan and Asia.
Courtesy Photograph
The place to play
An outstanding begin to any Hokkaido golf journey is the Nidom Traditional Course, 45 minutes from Sapporo. Nidom’s Nispa course has hosted the Japan PGA Matchplay Championship, the Japan Senior Open and the Japan LPGA Championship. Nidom means “considerable forest” within the indigenous Ainu language; acceptable because the course is surrounded by a 1,200-acre forest of Sakhalin spruce, Japanese larch and white oak. (Sika deer will doubtless survey your 8-footers for double-bogey with curiosity.)
Farther west, there’s Niseko Golf Course, an Arnold Palmer design with jaw-dropping views of Mt. Yotei (which resembles Mt. Fuji so intently, some guests are confused to study that Mt. Fuji is definitely 700 miles away, on the bigger island of Honshu). There’s additionally the favored Hokkaido Traditional Golf Membership, a Jack Nicklaus design courting from 1991, impressed by his famed Muirfield Village. Again towards Sapporo, one other Hokkaido hit is Sapporo Golf Membership’s Wattsu course, which has hosted the Japan Golf Tour’s ANA Open since 1973. Japanese legends Ryo Ishikawa, Jumbo Ozaki, Tommy Nakajima and Isao Aoki have all gained on this course, a 1958 design from famend Japanese architect Seiichi Inoue.
Different widespread tracks to take a look at are Hokkaido Brooks Nation Membership (designed by Ed Sneed and Taizo Kawada, with beehives for yardage markers, which has hosted the distinguished Japan Newbie) and Otaru Nation Membership (Hokkaido’s oldest golf membership, based in 1928, and previous host of the Japan PGA Championship).
In any respect of those programs, you’ll be greeted with pleasant bows whenever you arrive, plus, at many, futuristic thrives like self-driving golf carts by way of remote-control and Roomba-like robotic grass mowers. (Impressed? Some Japanese driving ranges even have robotic ball pickers.) One tip: deliver meishi (enterprise playing cards) with you, as card alternate is a deeply revered custom in Japan. If you wish to actually please your Japanese taking part in companions, get meishi printed in Japanese at any Kinkos in Sapporo — positive to trigger double-takes and delighted smiles.
Courtesy Photograph
Après-golf: A restorative soak
Between rounds, visiting golfers could be sensible to do because the locals do, and hit the onsen. These are pure hot-springs heated by underground water and are a staple of Japanese life. Nearly each city in Japan has a neighborhood onsen (as do most golf course clubhouses), so including in onsen visits will probably be a cinch. They’re really all over the place. You’ll be able to even watch the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters (the previous baseball crew of MLB famous person Shohei Ohtani) inside their stadium from an onsen. (No skinny-dipping allowed, as you’ll be on the Jumbotron.) What makes Hokkaido’s scorching springs so particular, nonetheless, is the preponderance of “wild onsen” — pure hot-springs out in forests and on edges of lakes and ocean tidal zones. There are wild onsen all throughout Hokkaido, every one an unimaginable nineteenth gap exercise. Some extra-special wild onsen to think about:
— Lake Kussharo, in Japanese Hokkaido’s Akan-Mashu Nationwide Park, comprises roughly 10 free onsen on its shores, together with the unforgettable Kotan Onsen, dutifully maintained by native volunteers.
— Shikaribetsu Gorge, in central Hokkaido, is a critical onsen hotspot. This postcard-perfect tenting haven comprises a minimum of seven wild onsen. Probably the most spectacular, Gakeshita-no-yu Onsen, has a small cave into which bathers can squeeze, mid-soak. (Hokkaido Wilds, an outside journey web site, has the gorge entrance data.)
— Sandan Onsen, on the northeast of Hokkaido, is a powerful three-tiered onsen in a forest, close to the trailhead for the volcano Rausu-dake.
— Need a wild onsen set actually within the intertidal zone? Strive Aidomari Onsen on Hokkaido’s northeast tip or Mizunashikaihin Onsen, simply east of Hakodate.
— Not truly wild, however in the event you crave creature comforts, or plan on sticking nearer to Sapporo, one indoor onsen facility price a morning journey is the domestically cherished Yunohana Jozankei, 40 minutes from Sapporo. Right here, you’ll doubtless be the one American… and will probably be tempted to by no means depart.
Courtesy Photograph
Park Golf: The proper wager settler
It’s not solely common golf that’s an obsession in Japan. Park Golf, a shorter model of golf, with holes from 33 yards to 110 yards and a single mallet-like golf membership, is vastly widespread in Japan (there are 500,000 park golfers, many of their 80s and 90s). Suppose what pickleball or padel is to tennis, however with fantastically manicured Park Golf programs all around the nation.
One of the best half: Hokkaido is each the birthplace and epicenter of Park Golf — boasting a staggering 800 of Japan’s 1,200 Park Golf programs. This implies, virtually talking, that you’re positive to run into a number of Park Golf programs in your go to. They’re set in seemingly each public park and city, with excessive numbers of older Japanese women and men teeing it up. A recreation of Park Golf is a must-do when you’re visiting Hokkaido. It’s critically native, the proper method to settle excellent golf wagers and, most of all, nice enjoyable.
The three finest starter programs for entrées into Park Golf, all within the Sapporo suburbs, are Wattsu Worldwide Park Golf Course (Kitahiroshima Metropolis), Ebetsu Kakusan Parkland (Ebetsu Metropolis) and Lawnscape Wattsu (Kitahiroshima Metropolis). Need a fast introduction to the foundations? Try the Nippon Park Golf Affiliation’s on-line rulebook. Even higher, play an introductory spherical earlier than your journey at America’s first Park Golf Course — Destroyer Park Golf Course in Buffalo, N.Y. Wish to really take a look at your Park Golf expertise? You’ll be able to compete in quite a few Park Golf tournaments in Japan, as this writer did final 12 months within the All-Japan Park Golf Championship.
Courtesy Photograph
Rounding out your rounds
For these aching so as to add another tour to all of the golf, listed below are three super-special adventures to deal with, exploring Hokkaido’s huge wilderness:
— Head to Rausu, a captivating fishing village on Japanese Hokkaido’s Sheritako Peninsula. Right here, you may leap on a wild boat tour run by Evergreen Shiretoko Nature Cruise, aboard their 50-person boat with English-speaking crew. On this two-hour boat tour, captained by pleasant fishermen, you’ll see whales and bears, plus heaps of different wildlife.
— Take a Japanese whiskey tour at Akkeshi Distillery, in jap Hokkaido. Set close to the ocean, the distillery affords a Japanese spin on Islay’s peaty malt whiskeys. Plus, every day, fishermen haul in oysters alongside the distillery, which you’ll pattern at quite a few oceanside oyster bars on the town, together with Kakiba, owned by Mr. Hitoshi Nakajima, who personally prepares a neighborhood selection referred to as kakiemon.
— Like to fish? There’s prodigious fishing for rainbow trout, Japanese char, and kokanee on Lake Akan in jap Hokkaido, from Could 1 via the tip of November. You’ll be able to e-book a tour with veteran fishing information Shigeru Takada at Tsuruga Journey Base. (And sure, there are lots of lakeside onsen close by, for a post-angling soak.)
Getting there
ANA flies from most main U.S. cities to Hokkaido’s quaint New Chitose Airport, with a connection in Tokyo at both Haneda or Narita Airport. Spherical-trip fares begin at about $950. As soon as on the bottom, you’ll discover that the greenback goes far lately, with alternate charges presently round 150 yen to the greenback (nearly 50 p.c increased than 5 years in the past). Take pleasure in the additional sushi.
Oliver Horovitz is a New York Metropolis-based golf author and the writer of “An American Caddie in St. Andrews.” He has made 4 journeys to Japan, together with a 2023 go to to compete within the All-Japan Park Golf Championship (through which he completed 479th out of 481 opponents).
