For chill seekers wanting to stay closer to home, hiking in Hokkaido is always a possibility.
CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | Travel Watch | Open the Door to Cool Summer a Escape
Shiretoko Peninsula is located in the north-east of Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan.
Witness last months failure of Hokkaido Takushoku Bank, formerly one of Japans ten giant city (commercial) banks.
Its loan book was five times the size of Hokuyo's: some 17, 000 Hokkaido companies borrowed from it.
But when the government started to cut spending a year ago, the effects on Hokkaido's economy were severe.
ECONOMIST: The first of an occasional series on Japan��s economic pains
The government's latest plans to plough more money into public works will help Hokkaido in the short term.
ECONOMIST: The first of an occasional series on Japan��s economic pains
Over-regulated airlines mean that it costs more to fly from Tokyo to Hokkaido than from Tokyo to Los Angeles.
ECONOMIST: The first of an occasional series on Japan��s economic pains
Despite a tunnel between Hokkaido and northern Honshu, Japan's main island, connections to the country's industrial heartland are poor.
ECONOMIST: The first of an occasional series on Japan��s economic pains
These failures could be played down because the events occurred in sparsely populated areas of Hokkaido and northern Honshu.
Last November two big Japanese financial firms collapsed: Yamaichi (the country's fourth-largest stockbroker) and Hokkaido Takushoku, a commercial bank.
The shelves on Tokyo's supermarkets are incomplete without a selection of Hokkaido camemberts.
ECONOMIST: The first of an occasional series on Japan��s economic pains
With a fifth of Japan's arable land, Hokkaido is the country's food basket.
ECONOMIST: The first of an occasional series on Japan��s economic pains
At another plant, in Hokkaido, the groundwater contamination was 5, 200 times the maximum.
Add to that uncertainties in Japanese financial institutions, as highlighted last week by the collapse of the Hokkaido Takushoku Bank.
Half a century ago Yubari, on the northern island of Hokkaido, was a coal-mining town with more than 100, 000 people.
In Hokkaido, the past hero is an American, William Clark, who was responsible for raising the island's farming to international standards.
ECONOMIST: The first of an occasional series on Japan��s economic pains
The merger of Hokkaido Takushoku and Hokkaido Bank will combine two banks saddled with huge amounts of bad loans into one.
This month came fresh insights into the cavalier lending practices of Hokkaido Takushoku Bank, when three of its former executives were arrested.
The storm caused two-meter-high (six-and-a-half-feet) drifts and was blamed for derailing a bullet train in Akita prefecture, south of Hokkaido, on Saturday afternoon.
Last week the Nikkei Index shot up 8% in one day when the Japanese government "accepted" the state of affairs and closed down Hokkaido Takushoku Bank.
Yesterday the strongest typhoon in some 50 years wreaked havoc and minor destruction along the entire Japanese archipelago, from Kyushu to Hokkaido, making a direct hit on Tokyo.
Such technical difficulties shouldn't prevent Tepco from taking measures to make sure the equipment at Fukushima Daiichi is working, said Tadashi Narabayashi, a nuclear-engineering professor at Hokkaido University.
Its finances will weaken further in October, when it merges with the Hokkaido-Tohoku Development Finance Corporation, a government regional-development agency saddled with truly monstrous volumes of bad loans.
It will take time to wean Hokkaido off government handouts.
ECONOMIST: The first of an occasional series on Japan��s economic pains
Also over the weekend, a 54-year-old man and a 76-year-old man were found collapsed in the snow in another part of Hokkaido, and both were confirmed dead, it said.
Muneo Suzuki is a backbench MP from the northern island of Hokkaido who was a prodigious fundraiser and a key player in the ruling party's richest and most powerful faction.
In November the island's main bank, Hokkaido Takushoku, from which some 60% of Hokkaido's companies had borrowed, collapsed under the weight of bad loans made to building and property companies.
ECONOMIST: The first of an occasional series on Japan��s economic pains
Japan's foreign ministry said two Russian Su-27s violated airspace for just over a minute Thursday near its northernmost main island of Hokkaido, and that Japan then scrambled four F-2 fighter jets.
On November 15th last year Iwao Takamuki, vice-president of a small Hokkaido lender called Hokuyo Bank, was asked by the finance ministry if he would like to acquire the prestigious Takugin.
In addition to some of the former assets of Hokkaido Takushoku Bank, it will have to take on the bad loans of Nippon Credit Bank and Long-Term Credit Bank, both nationalised last year.
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