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If you can't get enough of cranes, sea eagles and tufted puffins, and want to try to spot a Kuril seal, a red fox or a sea otter, head east from Kushiro in the direction of the Nemuro peninsula and stop in at Kiritappu Shitsugen (Wetland) prefectural park, where the town of Hamanaka and the Friends of Kiritappu Marsh have built the Kiritappu Shitsugen Centre (9.30am-4pm), with an excellent bookstore, nature museum and restaurant overlooking the marsh. Kiritappu is a two-hour drive from Kushiro on Route 44 and the Shitsugen centre lies south of Chanai train station on the MG road.If you plan to stay in Kiritappu, continue east on the MG road to Biwase bay, where between Shinkawa and the Biwase Tembodai viewpoint there's a friendly eco-lodge called Pension Porch (tel 0153/62-2772; Y15,000-20,000); the English-speaking owner Urita-san will set you up with canoes or take you out to uninhabited Kenboki Island to see rare flowers, seabirds, Kuril seals and possibly a whale spout off on the horizon. From Kiritappu you can continue up the coast with possible stops at the Nemuro and Notsuke peninsulas, before finally coming to the Shiretoko peninsula and national park. Mark Brazil, in his excellent Birdwatcher's Guide to Japan , writes that in this area of Eastern Hokkaido you can see three of the four greatest nature spectacles of Japan: Tancho cranes in the Kushiro and Kiritappu regions; whooper swans at Odaito near the Notsuke peninsula; and Steller's sea eagles at Rausu on the Shiretoko peninsula (the fourth are cranes at Arasaki in Kyushu). The best months for all of these are January, February and March.
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