Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

What is one of my favorite places in the world?  Every summer, I try to spend two weeks at a town, Kiritappu, in the eastern Hokkaido, one of the most remote corners of the Japanese archipelago.  I enjoy going there to sketch living things at the marsh, and observe local rural people. Two years ago, I had a chat with a friend of mine, a fisherman’s wife. What she told me was, "I think that there is an important story for our next generation in this town.”

I think there is much we can learn from a place where the environment and human culture is so closely intertwined.  People in Kiritappu have strong connections with nature, as most of them make their living from fishing, dairy farms, or tourism.

Kiritappu Wetland is a point of convergence, set between the ocean and land.  It takes in seawater and delivers benefits for those in the community, and for those of us who go there to enjoy wildlife. I always feel the life cycles of nature here, and decided to record it and the people of Kiritappu throughout the four seasons in my naturalist's journal.

When I arrived at the end of June, the wetland was a carpet of cotton grasses. According to a local nature guide, a profusion of cotton grasses comes roughly every four years, and this was one of them. We enjoyed the white fluffy waves longer than in the normal years, perhaps because we don't know...