Hokudai Shokubutsu-en (Botanical Gardens)

Hokudai Shokubutsu-en (Botanical Gardens) Review

With more than 5,000 plant varieties, the gardens are a cool summer retreat, both for the shade and welcome green space. For nonbotanists, highlights include a small Ainu Museum with a grisly but fascinating 13-minute film of an Ainu bear-killing ceremony in Asahikawa in 1935, and a large stuffed husky dog sharing a room with bears and an Ezo wolf. This glassy-eyed hound is Taro, one of the canine survivors of Japan abandoned in a 1958 Antarctic expedition (a story brought to non-Japanese audiences in the Disney movie Eight Below). After his ordeal, Taro retired to Hokkaido University and died in 1970.