Trekking in Daisetsuzan

Daisetsuzan is the emptiest corner of Japan — a high volcanic plateau of steaming vents, alpine tundra and lingering snowfields that Ainu tradition calls the playground of the gods. The grand traverse crosses it in the best part of a week, linking the major peaks across sixty-odd kilometres of trail with no villages and only basic, unstaffed emergency huts. You carry everything.

And you carry it in bear country: this is some of the most densely brown-bear-populated terrain in Japan, where bells and proper food storage are not optional. The landscape is a strange composite — part Iceland, part Siberia, part Scottish Highlands — and in September, weeks before anywhere else in the country, the whole plateau turns red and gold.

The emergency huts have no food or bedding, so full self-sufficiency is the price of entry. Go in late summer or very early autumn, carry proper bear precautions, and treat the weather up here as the serious variable it genuinely is.

Emergency huts are unstaffed and have no food or bedding. Brown bears are present throughout; bells and food storage are not optional.