I have been leading Hokkaido Winter Wildlife Nature photo tours for over 25 years without an incident, and whenever I am creating an itinerary there are always certain elements that I implement, and priority #1 is always cater to the clients. My participants may be planning to visit Japan once, so I only offer once in a lifetime business class photography workshop tour experiences, so clients can sit back, relax, and enjoy a care-free all-inclusive Hokkaido winter wonderland safari. I’m not even remotely interested in conducting run of mill guided Japan tours. Plus, I’m not a tour guide. I’m a pro adventurer and photography instructor, but I have a tour guide on staff; however, if a person or a group reaches out to me requesting a tour with rail passes or backpacking or cycling, I am more than willing to help them at a minimal charge or for free, as I have done so countless times for budget travelers, and I guarantee I gave them more information and suggestions than what they are going to get from tour books, but I am upfront that I will not be sharing my 25 years of scouting routes throughout Japan. These routes are reserved for my paying customers. When pros like myself plan and lead these Hokkaido Wildlife nature tour workshops, we don’t have a magic hat that we pull an itinerary from, but it seems like some international photo workshop leaders must be using a magic 8-ball and a Google map to create a fanciful itinerary with roads that don’t exist or are closed for the season. Interestingly, I’ve seen a lot of carbon copies of most of my Japan photos workshop itineraries online, especially my Hokkaido nature tour. Incidentally, I have been contacted, probed, and prodded by several of my newsletter subscribers as to where they can find the largest herd of Sika deer on the planet, but just like my proprietary routes, I’m not sharing that information with just anyone. And we locals are shocked and awestruck by how many pro photographers and agencies are offering Hokkaido birding photography workshop tours. Personally, I know most of the local wildlife and adventure photographers in Hokkaido and around Japan as well as guides who speak English or other languages other than Japanese, and I know there are not enough of us to go around to help co-lead all tours for international photography workshop companies. I know for a fact several of us, myself and others, are not at all interested in co-leading workshops with visiting international photographers, as we are booked two, three, or more years in advance. I guarantee the majority of those international photographers offering the Hokkaido ‘adventure of a lifetime’, don’t even know the road to the local 7-11’s in the region that they are supposed to be wildlife and Hokkaido expert wilderness explorers! WoW! Every five years or so, however, I will co-lead a Hokkaido wildlife adventure workshop tour including Mt. Fuji and snow monkeys with photographers who are either friends, or friends of friends, or wish to partner on other worldwide photo workshop adventures.
I’ve mentioned it more times than I can count, but safety is paramount. Even 25 years ago when I was leading a Himalayan expeditions to summit, safety was always my number one concern, and I was one of the leads in the HH group. All of my clients made it back to base camp and home after more than heated conversations among the participants and myself over safety issues. I attempted to climb back up to help with the rescue, but the weather was too harsh, and and from camp two to one at the ice fall, I fell 20 - 30 meters. Both of my legs were non-functional, but I attempted to crawl using only my arms when the medics put me in a stretcher to the chopper for airlifting me out. I am lucky that I was at the station one ice fall because if I had been any higher, I would still be on that mountain, frozen until someone ‘borrowed’ my Rolex Explorer II and checked the serial number so they could say, “We found him!” My doctors told me I wouldn’t walk again properly without support, but after several years of rehab and a strong will, I had once again proven medical friends and colleagues wrong. The only downfall was in order to repair and regain the muscle strength in my legs and hip steroids were needed. Today I am off the steroids but I have been struggling keep my weight down ever since, no more daily 10k runs, but I keep in good health, hiking, swimming, training room, cycling, plus some medium hard enduro riding, always gets my blood pumping and spirits up.
A few years back I co-led a Hokkaido birding tour, and it was an interesting experience to say the least! I wanted to co-lead the tour with my colleague because he was a respected landscape photographer and is a master at printing, knows his camera gear, and is a superb orator, and he has a decent reputation, but not everyone sees eye to eye with him. However, I will never forget the baggage and drama my co-leader brought along for as long as I live. One event occurred in Kussharo, Japan; this region is where we photograph the Red-crowned cranes, and we usually depart our lodgings about 04:30 to 05:00 as the itinerary states that our group will photograph the cranes at their roost, and we arrive in the blue hour just before the Hokkaido golden hour. It can be one of the most spectacular shots, especially on cold mornings, as the condensation from the mixture of river water and hot springs water mixes, and the condensation collects on the tree branches and freezes overnight. As sunlight hits the trees, the ice crystals shine like stars or fireflies, but the only difference is that in Hokkaido, it’s around -30℃ (-22℉). I always offer two mornings to photograph the cranes at the roost, but for some reason that year, only one photographer in our group was interested in the morning shoot at the roost, so the first morning we went out together as planned, and after sunrise, we returned to our lodgings for a quick breakfast. On our return other participants and my staff of three were enjoying their morning meal, along with my co-leader. After breakfast, we all headed out in our assigned SUVs and had a great day photographing the Red-crowned cranes, but during lunch that day my co-leader had not one beer but two, and I thought, “Ah, wonderful, a day drinking co-leader!” I have zero problem with a client enjoying a drink with lunch, but a co-leader, me or any of my staff NO! Later that evening, I called a meeting with participants about our next day’s plan for photographing the cranes, and I explained to participants they could either join us or stay at the lodgings and enjoy a hot breakfast. To my surprise again, only one photographer was interested to photograph the cranes starting in the blue hour, and this is when my co-leader put in his two cents. He told the participant, “Since you’re the only one interested in going out to photograph the cranes at the roost again, we’re not going to do it again tomorrow. Tomorrow morning we will be checking out of our hotel, stop and photograph the cranes, then we will make our way to Akanko, and book into our next lodgings.”
Rare video of Red-Crowned cranes mating, I took this video during the golden hour at the cranes roost, February, 2020. I spend maximum time in the field waiting for one in a lifetime moments as this.
That is when our client who is now my good friend said he would take a taxi, and we could pick him up at the Red-crowned cranes roost later in the morning. My co-leader said, “Okay, you take a taxi, and everyone will have breakfast, then checkout. We’ll pick you up at the cranes roost,” and in my opinion, he even put the knife in deeper by saying, “Leave your bags at the front counter so we can collect them as we depart the hotel.” When I heard this, you could have blown me over with a feather! Everyone went to their rooms, and I knocked on the wildlife photographer’s door who was supposedly taking a taxi to the cranes. I said, “There is zero chance of you taking a taxi tomorrow morning to photograph the cranes at their roost, especially not on a Hokkaido wildlife photo tour I am leading. Not on my watch, no way!” At 03:30, I, and one of my staff tour guides and driver, Gaku, knocked on the client’s door who had actually not slept; I collected his bags and took them to my room, and he and Gaku departed at 04:00 to the Red-crowned cranes roost. Gaku had to return to the lodgings due us checking-out, and after checkout and breakfast, we met up with our humble and true wildlife photographer and adventurer at the designated spot. And I never told him or anyone, but I asked a friend who lives close by the Red-crowned cranes roost to please keep an eye on a client of mine that morning, and he periodically drove by and reported that he was fine.
After a hot breakfast and check out in Kushiro, we headed out to the cranes roost and collected the only other adventurer wildlife photographer in the group besides me. While photographing during a Hokkaido winter photography wildlife adventure or anywhere in the world, your group should always have a local workshop leader or guide who knows the weather and weather bubbles, best is a pro who does not rely on weather apps, smartphone Google weather, etc., because the information collected is probably not collected regionally and is most likely only updated periodically throughout the day, not by the minute. The weather in some regions changes in the blink of an eye, and you cannot blame visitors or people who haven’t spent any serious amount of time scouting the region because they simply don’t know the region and its possibly weather hazards, and unfortunately smartphones are mostly unusable in weather bubbles. After photographing the Red-crowned cranes for about two hours, I told everyone, “A fast moving thundersnow storm with a cyclone bomb is coming so pack up and get ready, we’re leaving in 15 minutes, hurry please!” Although we were ready to depart, my co-leader said to me after checking his smartphone, “What’s the problem? My Iphone says it’ll be sunny and blue skies all day.” My response was, “We’re packing up.” Right next to our group, I saw old friends from NHK, BBC, and some local Hokkaido photographers who have been using the same area for years. We all know each other, and in unison, we nodded knowing what was coming, seeing the strong spin drifts hitting the mountain peaks, so we all packed up to leave. Many of the tourists and their visiting tour guides remained, and as we left the area in our SUVs, I could see many of the tourists and photographers milling around completely oblivious to the coming storm, but I could see that the conservation officers were looking at us leaving and were most likely preparing to shut the park early. On the drive to Akanko, my co-leader and clients were repeatedly checking their phones, but all they could see in the forecast was clear skies and the possibility of it becoming overcast with flurries later in the evening, so everyone was confused as to why we had left. Even one of my drivers who is from Yuki-Guni, Niigata, one of the Top 10 snowiest regions in the world, looked confused about why were leaving, but our history together meant that he trusted my decision without question. An hour into the 90 minute drive, just after lunch, everyone in our caravan of SUVs fell silent as day turned to night. 30 minutes later, as we drove into Akanko to our 5-6 star lodgings that I have used forever and is so huge that it houses not one The Northface Shop but two, the streets in Akanko were becoming unusable by regular vehicles but not us, and the emergency snow plows were already out. I looked over at my co-leader and asked him again, “What does your phone say?” His response, “Turning cloudy with a chance of flurries.” At the same instant, the porters came out to collect our baggage, saying, “Wow, you made it just in time.” My point is to make sure you do your due diligence when researching and booking your world photo tour or your Hokkaido photography workshop tour because most people don’t give enough consideration to safety, and I don’t want you to make that mistake.