Asahikawa

A city zoo famous for exhibits built around how animals naturally move, with penguins flying overhead through a glass tunnel. In the snow season the penguins march single file along the paths, while the zoo shuts for a spell in April and November.

A blue pond formed behind a barrier built to hold back mudflows after Tokachidake erupted in 1988, with bare tree trunks standing out of the water. The colour only comes through on clear, windless days, and the drive out takes about 1 hour.

In the Shirogane Onsen village, groundwater seeps out of cracks in the cliff and falls into the blue Biei River. The front-on view is from the bridge over the river, and in winter only the water stays blue between the snowbound rock walls.

A lavender farm in Nakafurano with no admission charge. In July, when the purple is at its height, the car park fills from the morning, and on some days the lavender soft-serve queue is busier than the fields.

A ropeway up the flank of Asahidake, Hokkaido's highest peak, where a trail loops past steaming fumaroles around the top station. It is counted as Japan's earliest spot for autumn colour, turning red by mid-September, and even in midsummer you need a jacket.

A columnar-basalt gorge on Daisetsuzan's northern flank, where the Ginga and Ryusei falls show side by side from one viewpoint. A hot spring village sits at the gorge mouth, and in winter an ice festival raises frozen sculptures by the river.

Branches of several well-known city ramen shops under one roof, each offering smaller bowls so you can work through two or three. It sits in the north-eastern outskirts, easier by car than by train, and a tiny ramen shrine stands by the entrance.

The straight avenue leading from Asahikawa Station, which in 1972 became Japan's first permanent pedestrian street. During the winter festival ice sculptures line its length, and it begins as soon as you step out of the station.

Flower fields planted in coloured bands across the Biei hills, toured on a tractor-drawn wagon. The flowers change in turn from late spring to autumn, and in winter the same slope becomes a snow-sledding hill.

A museum for Asahikawa-born novelist Miura Ayako, set in the foreign-tree arboretum where her novel Hyoten takes place. Forest paths lead off behind it through scenes from the book, and the walk from the station takes about 20 minutes.

A big lone poplar among the Biei hill fields, nicknamed after the couple in a 1970s car advert. The surrounding Patchwork Road has several such trees, all on working farmland, so photograph from the roadside and never step into the fields.

A gallery of Shinzo Maeda, the photographer who first made Biei's hills famous, opened in 1987 in a converted school. The very slopes in his prints roll away outside, and a birch-wood path behind the building makes a short stroll.

Some fifteen log-cabin workshops strung along boardwalks in a Furano forest, where makers sell woodwork, candles and other crafts. When dusk falls each cabin lights up and the woods look like a picture book, so many time their visit for evening.

An English-style garden grown from a farmyard in east Asahikawa, planted with Hokkaido-hardy perennials as its Gardens of the North. Visitors are admitted from late April until mid-October; Shatekiyama, a hill behind, overlooks beds and paddies.

A gorge at the city's western edge where the Ishikari River churns through rock; the Ainu name means village of the gods. Over the suspension bridge stands the old Kamuikotan station building, closed in 1969, with three steam locomotives parked beside it.

Founded in 1916 by Ainu leader Kawamura Itakishiro, the oldest Ainu museum in Japan, still run by his descendants. It shows tools, clothing and a rebuilt chise house, and staff add stories from their own lives.