Mark Does Japan: Day 5

22 October 2025 Filed in: Photography | Travel

Tuesday, 21 October 2025

It only took until day five to have an insane tourist day. This is the sort of day where you spend over 12 hours travelling to visit one place for an hour! Welcome to visiting Cape Soya, the northernmost point in Japan.

The day starts normally enough with a train, the Limited Express Soya to Wakkanai.

Platform signs at the station. Two trains due on platform 6 but the next one at 9am is the Limited Express Soya to Wakkanai

At Asahikawa station on the correct platform

Not only do you get signs listing the trains arriving in both Japanese and English but you also get told where to wait.

Another sign and this one indicating the cars associated with the train and where to stand for each car

Where do you need to stand for your carriage number?

And here I am standing at position 3 waiting for the train to pull into the station.

A train with a blue front arrives at the platform. It has a front connecting door and a driver's compartment high above the door.

A train arriving from Sapporo

So the ride is long and not particularly photogenic. You whiz past typical rural scenes and views of the countryside are blocked by trees growing along the track until they aren’t and you don’t have your camera ready. There is this shot though.

A bend in a river provides some open space to clearly see the countryside

A river somewhere along the route

There were a lot of rivers, or oxbow lakes, along the path but after 3.75 hours the train arrives at Wannakai with about 30 minutes to kill until the bus leaves. Time enough to walk to the bus station, which is inside the train station, and buy a special return ticket, wander around outside. The station looks very new.

The railway tracks are extended outside of the station itself across a plaza, perhaps indicating an old line to the port

I don’t know why

It’s freezing outside so back inside to wait some more and then closer to the time go out to the bus stop.

Bus stop sign in 3 languages, Japanese, English and Russian

Russia is quite close but Russians didn’t settle in Hokkaido

A number of traffic signs included Russian as well as Japanese and English. My bus is the third one down. Don’t miss it as they don’t run them very often. This was my first experience with Japanese buses and this was a gentle introduction as I had a ticket to the destination and a return so I didn’t need to work out the fare. About a dozen people going out to Cape Soya on the bus.

A Japanese bus, white with a red stripe above the windows and another below the windows. The bottom is also painted red with two thin red stripes above it. There is a single, wide middle door (the entrance) and a bifold door at the front.

The bus at Cape Soya about to continue its route without any more customers, we all got off

And here’s what we all came to photograph.

A triangular monument announcing itself as the northernmost place in Japan

The Cape Soya monument on the furtherest north place in Japan

OK that’s fine but the bus won’t be back for an hour so what else can you see without freezing? There is this monument to a song about Cape Soya, which plays the song.

A dark plaque between two pink rocks with music notation carved into it

Monument to Soya Misaki

There’s a lighthouse up the hill.

A lighthouse with a square base painted in alternating red and white blocks

Cape Soya lighthouse

And if you walk up to it you find a lot of monuments on the plateau next to it, including one for the Count of La Pérouse (yes the French Botany Bay guy). Apparently he discovered the strait between Hokkaido and Sakhalin (let’s not mention the indigenous people about now).

The monument is composed of two sails and a relief of his bust

Monument for La Pérouse

There were also a number of peace memorials up there but back to the bus stop.

A lollypop type bus stop with a panel at the bottom indicating the schedule. I'm waiting for the last bus of the day.

queue by the bus stop and don’t be late for the last bus

Queuing for a bus that we hope isn't late since the wind is freezing. A special gift from Russia?

14 people wanting to get out of the freezing wind

The bus returns with about an hour and half to kill before the train and the light is fading so I get in a quick walk across to the port and meet some locals, look at the Japan Coast Guard boat and look at a very strange breakwater dome.