Yakumo / HokkaidoConnect with Locals While Experiencing Rural Life in Yakumo, Hokkaido

After arriving in town, dive right into your Yakumo adventure by getting your hands sticky making mochi rice cakes out of freshly steamed glutinous rice. At Chiba Farm, you’ll be draped in a bright blue happi coat and handed a large wooden mallet for a chance to try this traditional sweet-making activity called mochi-tsuki.

Once the steaming rice has been walloped smooth, work with the Chiba family to shape the still-warm dough into snacks filled with homemade anko sweet bean paste known as daifuku. As you stretch, fill, and roll your mochi, chat with your hosts about the town, the surrounding hills, and the farm. Family patriarch Hikotaro Chiba in particular brims with stories about bears (the hills are full of them!), farming, and life in Yakumo.

Chiba Farm also offers vegetable-harvesting experiences and rice-paddy walks that will give you an up-close look at the lifestyle of a Hokkaido farming family.

Stomach stuffed with mochi and head filled with tales of Yakumo, make your way to the overlook and observatory at Yakumo Dairy Farm, for fresh air and fantastic views. To the east the Yakumo townscape and Uchiura Bay, also known as Funka Bay, spread before you, while to the west, Mt. Yurappu and other peaks of the Oshima Peninsula tower over the land.

Surrounded by verdant fields dotted with grazing cattle, you can’t help but soak up the slower pace of this rural paradise. Visit the overlook as part of Yakumo Village’s Yakumo Town Sightseeing Tour, or for an evening of admiring the celestial show that commences once night falls.With little light pollution to interfere, myriad stars speckle the night sky, and the Milky Way stretches across the darkened heavens.

In the days before indoor plumbing became standard, the Japanese would gather at community bathhouses known as sento to clean their bodies and exchange news with neighbors. While this custom is no longer common, some of the old bathhouses still exist—though often in a different form.

In the case of Yakumo’s sento, the more than 100-year-old building has found new life as Kominka Guesthouse SENTO and Restaurant SENTO. Spend the night cozied up in a dormitory—women-only or mixed—or private room with tatami flooring, and enjoy camaraderie with fellow guests and staff in the lounge.

Located a mere 10-minute walk from Yakumo Station, SENTO is equipped with two showers, two washrooms, a basic kitchenette, and a pay-washing machine, for a comfortable and convenient stay. Out back, a lawn, garden, and deck provide the perfect place to sit back and relax between adventures.

Attached to the guesthouse is Restaurant SENTO, which serves a variety of dishes made with ingredients harvested in and around Yakumo. Thanks to Yakumo’s location, this includes farm-grown fare as well as seafood.

Seat yourself at one of the sunken bathtub booths to truly feel the history of the building as you enjoy your meal, and keep things local by ordering Yakumo-brewed beer and locally produced sake.

Start your second day in Yakumo back on the land, with vegetable picking at Morioka Farm. Several crops can be harvested by visitors depending on the season, including sweet potatoes and edamame. The star of the show, however, is leeks, both regular leeks grown outdoors and harvested in fall, and high-grade, greenhouse-cultivated nanpaku leeks harvested in winter.

A regular leek-harvesting experience involves pulling leeks from the ground—harder than you’d think—followed by sampling grilled leeks.

The menu depends on the season, but will include local vegetables and meat—and plenty of amiable conversation. Vegetarians can have their veggies grilled separately.

For a full meal and extra activities, choose Morioka Farm’s barbecue plan, which will see you whisked away to a secluded spot in the forested hills. Here a small river for fishing flows past an open field equipped with covered barbecue area, as well as a rustic hot spring.

Spend time fishing, splashing through the river, and soaking in the hot spring to the sounds of the breeze in the trees, the singing of insects, and the gurgling of the river. This is relaxing Yakumo style, so kick back and enjoy an afternoon of good food, friendly conversation, and sumptuous soaks in the soft, smooth water that bubbles up from the ground.