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A guided walk through Shiraoi’s magnificent natural landscape

Shiraoieki Kita Tourist Information Center

The following morning, we headed to the Shiraoieki Kita Tourist Information Center, a facility where you can arrange trips and buy souvenirs, food, drinks and ice cream.

The Omotenashi Guide Center’s Poroto Recreation Forest Walk

We were there to meet our guides from the Omotenashi Guide Center. The Center can provide English-speaking guides for experiences like the bear carving mentioned in Part 2. It also offers various tours around Shiraoi, each led by experts in their particular field. We were participating in the Poroto Recreation Forest Walk.

Shiraoi is relatively warm for Hokkaido, but it can still get quite wintry and you can even walk over Lake Poroto when it freezes over. It had actually snowed the night before our walk, so the forest was covered in an atmospheric white blanket.

The scenery was certainly lovely, but it was the guides who made the experience. I learnt so many new things, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll share just one. Lots of Asian skunk cabbages grow in the forest. The Ainu word for these translates as “bear grass.” The reason? Well, apparently bears eat them as a laxative to relieve post-hibernation constipation. How’s that for a fact!

English-speaking guides are available if you book ahead, though our head guide insisted he could communicate through performance. And after watching him don a pair of antlers to mimic a deer, I can well believe him.

At the end of the walk, guests are treated to some tea, coffee, sweets, and marshmallows toasted over a small stove. During this time, our guide showed us his notebooks jammed with facts and Ainu words. The guides are obviously very passionate about what they do. And they are clearly fond of each other too. It was like taking a walk with a bunch of old friends. All in all, a lovely experience.

And with that, our trip was at an end. I really enjoyed my time in Shiraoi. It’s such a welcoming place with so much to explore. And it’s also a great place to experience the richness of Ainu culture. It’s definitely worth a visit and I’d certainly like to return one day. At the end of our walk, our guide mentioned his home-brewed lemon alcohol. He said I should return to sample it and see Shiraoi in a different season. And you know, I just might do that.

Part1: Experiencing Ainu Culture at Upopoy
Part2: Sampling local cuisine and experiencing traditional crafts