Hokkaido may well be the only part of Japan where visitors from the American West feel more at home than do visitors from Tokyo or Osaka. This northernmost island was Japan's frontier, settled in the mid-1800s by pioneers drawn by prospects of fortunes in timber, farming, fishing, gold. You'll find rolling dairy farms, forested mountains, lakeside resorts, clapboard buildings, corn-on-the-cob stands.
Similarities to the West are all the more fascinating for the contrasts: hip ...