During a balmy afternoon at my 100-year-old kominka in Niigata last week, I heard the unmistakable call of a flock of Whooper Swans as they flew over my house. A colleague of mine, Matthew and I, were in an outside meeting in my backyard under the shade of a huge Safari Tarp due to intermittent lightning and thunderstorms. He asked me about spotting Whooper Swans on my annual Hokkaido Photo Tour Birding Workshop cross country expedition coming up in February 2022. Matthew remarked that due to the wealth of birding photo ops across Japan’s most northern island Hokkaido, the Shima Enaga, Red-crowned Cranes, Steller’s Sea Eagles, White-tailed Eagles, Blakiston’s Fish Owls, and many others that the largest number of Whooper Swans had to be in Hokkaido. I appreciated his enthusiasm, but as a Hokkaido and Niigata resident, I had to correct him. Niigata has well over 20,000 Whooper swans migrating annually to destinations prefecture-wide, and just 10 minutes from my 100-year-old kominka satellite office’s backyard, there are over 5,000 Whooper swans in Lake Hyoko. It may seem as if I’m giving away a key photography location for those seeking an easy birding photo opportunity, but that’s not the case. All I’ve shared is one of the dozens of spectacular locations around Niigata where Whooper Swans roost during winter, but for the visiting photographer, without being conscious of weather and topography, anyone who spends one or two days visiting Lake Hyoko will probably not get any photos worth the time and effort involved in traveling there.

Seeing the Whooper Swans in September, I related to Matthew that the Whooper Swans we had just spotted wouldn’t be stopping in Niigata. They were probably headed to Nagano or the Yamanashi highlands, where they will winter over. The ones that were going to stay in Niigata for the winter hadn’t quite arrived yet. Every year, thousands of Whooper swans come to visit, taking their long migration down from Siberia. As a local, I am aware of my surroundings, so before I begin any Niigata photo workshop, I dutifully check weather charts for the best locations on where the birds will be that day. For over twenty years, I have scouted from Yamanashi’s Mt. Fuji, Nagano, Yamagata, Akita, Aomori, and most of the Tohoku Region in search of where the Whooper Swans and other birds winter over. It takes years to map and to understand the migration patterns of wildlife. A few winters ago, the temperatures were below average, and at the base of Mt. Fuji, all the fuji five lakes were frozen, which was unusual and extraordinary. In the image below, a boat and its motor are frozen in time and ice in one of the fuji five lakes, a phenomenon that only occurs once every 2 - 3 decades. Frozen fuji five lakes are such a rare occurrence that owners leave their boats tied to dock year-round, but that year, an arctic blast moved in and froze the lakes overnight. This was when I spotted over a dozen Whooper Swans wintering over at Lake Yamanakako. You could have blown me over with a feather as I had never seen these giant swans at this location before. I tried to get a photo of their leg band identification/Bird ID, to search for them on the worldwide birding database, but I could not get close enough, as I did not plan on photographing Whooper Swans and left my Nikon 800mm f/5.6 in the SUV. This winter, I will be back in the Mt. Fuji region, and you can guarantee I will be looking out for Whooper swans in the region, and I will have my long lens with me.

Japan is over 3,000 km long and is over 70% mountainous wilderness, surrounded by ocean and weather jet streams coming from every direction, so weather can be tricky to get right. Japan is latitudinally long, located in the Northwest Pacific Ocean, with climates ranging from sub-arctic conditions in the north to subtropical in the south. There are two distinct ecological lines dividing Japan’s natural indigenous plant and animal life. The “Blakiston’s Line” and the “Watase’s Line.” Due to this uniquely rare ecological condition, Japan is abundantly rich in avifauna, making it the perfect location for wildlife and wildlife photographers. However, I do not like to waste precious time driving around with clients trying to spot birds, and this is why I always recommend when you travel to go with a local pro-photographer who knows the best locations and times of day and knows how to read the weather and weather charts and does not rely on apps on a smartphone or other digital device that can break or even worse lose power while in the field.

Leaving from Tokyo, it’s a short couple-hour shinkansen/bullet train ride to Tsubame-Sanjo, The Home Of Metalworking, which is known for tools that are used worldwide. I guarantee you have seen or used these tools, and most homes worldwide will have quality items made from here, pieces or metalworking tools that last generations. Tsubame and Sanjo cities are famous for their metalworking, by the region’s dedicated artisans, and many shops date back to the Edo period. Today, Tsubame-Sanjo continues to manufacture metal crafts such as cooking knives, survival knives, samurai swords, scissors, gardening shears, human grooming accessories, automotive parts, and many others, infusing traditional techniques such as using cutting tools under hot ambers keeping alive its origins of metalworking. Tsubame-Sanjo is a world-renowned spot where metalwork and crafts such as gardening tools and traditional razors are made so sharp that they were rumored to be used in the Johnny Depp movie Sweeney Todd and exported worldwide. And we can’t forget sake for which Niigata is famous, the number one producer of the most delicious and sweet sake in the world, and Tsubame-Sanjo artisans craft metal cups of copper, steel, or other metals which don’t perspire at any temperature and are perfect for anyone who enjoys a nightcap, and I guarantee once you try them for yourself, they will be your prized possessions, no longer souvenirs.

My colleagues and I believe that a Niigata prefecture visitor can stay away from Niigata’s downtown, but several tour agencies operate exclusively in this area. In doing so, they are leaving out 95% of what Niigata prefecture has to offer. Regions outside Niigata city such as Tsunan, Minami-Uonuma, Itoigawa, Murakami, Yahiko, Iwamuro with its famous onsens, Joetsu, and many other culturally and resource rich areas are located far away from the city center, but they represent the reason why I moved to Niigata. I did not move to Niigata to live in the heart of a city similar to Machida, Tokyo. Niigata’s raw, natural power resides in the countryside, in the cities and regions that I listed before. Niigata is the 5th largest prefecture in Japan, but the combination of its agriculture - specifically the finest rice in Japan, cuisine, and wildlife make it my and many others’ number one. No matter what your photographic goal, wildlife, cuisine, nature, landscapes, mountainscapes, seascapes, forest bathing, snow monkeys, geisha, architecture, or fine metallurgy, you will have the opportunity to take once in a lifetime photos while visiting Niigata. If Tokyo is your point of origin, you could take a late bullet train the night before, stay at a traditional Japanese inn/ryokan, most likely home to a mineral rich, healing hot spring that has been used for thousands of years by pilgrims seeking rejuvenation from their travels, enjoy the best foods Japan has to offer, and sample some of the fantastic rice wine, sake, for which the prefecture is famous worldwide and enjoy your time photographing the majestic Whooper Swan and the other features Niigata has to offer before departing for your next destination by air, land, or sea.