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It only takes a little over 40 minutes to drive from Toya to Noboribetsu. After breakfast, I was able to grab a quick nap. As soon as we entered Noboribetsu, we saw this hot spring ogre, which is said to guard the medicinal baths in Noboribetsu’s Hell Valley.

Our first stop was the Bear Ranch. When we bought our tickets, we saw that “Bear Sauna” had just opened a few days before our visit.

The Bear Ranch is also up in the mountains, so you have to take a ropeway to get there. The kid who loves ropeways was thrilled again.

This ropeway was pretty interesting. For example, there was the dried fish ropeway shown below, which is only available in winter. When we went, it was parked at the ropeway entrance.

There was also this bamboo-cage one, with a stuffed bear riding inside.

We arrived just in time for the duck race to start. I was worried we might miss it, but after getting up the mountain we realized the whole ranch was tiny, and the duck race was just to the left after getting off the ropeway—very close by.

There was a betting game for the race, with a 200-yen wager. We bet on the yellow duck.

The Japanese are really good at building the atmosphere for this kind of thing, making it feel like a huge event.

In reality, they just scatter feed in a pond to attract the ducks and see who reaches the other side first. The yellow duck we bet on was originally in the lead, but halfway through it actually turned around to eat, and ended up finishing last. The kid kept asking why we didn’t win, and we didn’t even notice what prize the winners got.

Then it was time to see the bears. There are three areas: the cub area on the right as soon as you get off the ropeway, and further ahead past the duck race are the male bear area and the female bear area. We went to the male bear area first.

There were several machines in the park where you could buy bear feed. We bought the largest portion, and by the end it was almost exactly enough to finish feeding them all.

First we went to the male bear area, which had two sections: the bear cage and the human cage. The bear cage is where you look down at the bears from above. The human cage sounds scary, and even the kid didn’t dare go in after hearing the name. In fact, it’s just a glass passageway where you can feed the bears through pipes from below or through holes from above, letting you interact with them at much closer range.

The female bears in the female bear area were even more fun to watch. The food we threw was spotted by two female bears at the same time. They stood off against each other for quite a while, and in the end they still didn’t fight. The tension somehow just disappeared.

You can’t feed the cub area, but the interactions there are even more interesting: some are climbing trees, some are chasing butterflies, some are fighting, some are two pairs fighting at once, and some are fighting in the water...

There were lots of tiny little flying insects in the cub area, which was pretty annoying.

Further to the right there’s a restaurant, and also a small museum with plenty of photo spots.

The food all looked really cute.

There’s a gift shop next to the ropeway station, and there’s also one at the ticket counter down below.

Across from the ropeway station is the bear-fighting contest area, where staff hand out free bear feed. Each person can get 3 pieces.

If you keep walking, there’s an observation deck, but it was very foggy that day, so we couldn’t see anything.

On the way back down, I took a photo of the ropeway cars hanging with dried fish. It really was dried fish! You could even smell the fishy odor lingering in the air...

I think Japanese zoos and places like this have a lot of animal interaction. Although zoos are ultimately very different from nature, after visiting this bear ranch, I couldn’t help wondering why we worked so hard to watch bears through binoculars in Yellowstone. Maybe we’re just too laid-back to really appreciate the fun of an unexpected encounter.

2023 Japan Travel Series

This series chronicles the author’s trips in Japan after returning to China and before heading back to the U.S.

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