Red-Crowned Cranes
of Kushiro

For most of the twentieth century, Japan believed the tancho was gone: hunted out, its wetlands drained. Then a handful were found alive in the one place too boggy to farm: the Kushiro marsh. In the killing winter of 1952, villagers began scattering corn. The cranes stayed. The village eventually renamed itself Tsurui ("where the cranes live"), and the population climbed from dozens to well over a thousand.

That's the history. What you fly here for is the dance: two red-crowned cranes facing each other in falling snow, wings wide, heads thrown back, in a courtship display that hasn't changed since the Pleistocene. Photographers count Tsurui among the great wildlife sites on Earth.

Everything good happens before 9:30. The bridge at first light, then coffee from a vending machine that has never felt so important, then Tsurumidai as the 9:00 feeding scatters corn and the sky fills with incoming birds, a sound like torn silk. Tour buses arrive later in the morning, after the roost and the first feeding are over.

Spend the afternoon wide: the Crane Center's hides, or the SL steam train chuffing across the frozen marsh to Shibecha and back. Then one more dawn before the 40-minute drive back to the airport, windows down for exactly four seconds, just to hear the cold.