Winter wonderland: Holiday in Hokkaido, Japan's second-biggest island

Aussies are renowned for following the sun, and if we should happen to travel for winter it's likely because we're chasing powder snow. Especially so in Japan's northernmost island, Hokkaido, where resorts like Niseko and Furano are a skier's and snowboarder's dream.

But I'm in Eastern Hokkaido in the icy depths of winter sans snowboard bag. Six months ago I was here in summer - between centrally positioned Lake Akan and Kushiro city on the Pacific Ocean - hiking volcanic cones puffing with fumaroles, canoeing the Kushiro River, and wandering boardwalks across Japan's largest wetland.

Now everything is blanketed in white and it's like an entirely new destination. Lakes are frozen, snow crunches underfoot, and the trees and mountains that were simply pretty in summer have taken on a grander presence with their cloaks of snow. Best of all (in my opinion) is that the daily Japanese ritual of onsen - soaking in steaming geothermal hot spring baths - is even more heavenly in winter.

While some of Eastern Hokkaido's activities might be off the cards in winter, a host of new adventures await.

Watching from the eighth-floor window seat in my room at Hanayuuka hotel through a pair of binoculars, I feel as though I'm spying on a secret Arctic base. Stretching roughly four kilometres across, Lake Akan is a frozen expanse of white and a hive of activity. Tiny figures move between buildings, snowmobiles streak across the ice and neat rows of dozens of tents hide ... who knows what? There's only one way to find out. Get down there.

In Summer, Lake Akan is a flower-fringed sapphire beauty sprinkled with swan-boats, but in winter it becomes Ice Land Akan, a kind of pay-per-ride fun park on ice. "What do you want to do?" my travelling buddies ask. "I want to do it all!" I squeal like an excited kid. Spoiler alert: I don't (because it's minus 2 degrees and an onsen awaits) but running amok on such a surreal landscape for a stint is irresistible.

Activities include ice skating, "banana-boating" (like the watery version but pulled by snowmobile) and quad biking, but snowmobiling gets my first vote. I grab a helmet and join a fast-moving queue until I'm sitting in the saddle with nothing but the open lake and distant mountains ahead. Driving is as easy as opening the throttle and following a course marked by coloured poles. It's exhilarating to be let loose.

And the tents? Each one provides just enough space for a few tiny collapsible chairs in front of three neatly drilled holes in the ice. It's the perfect set up to fish for smelt - roughly finger-sized but hugely popular when fried en masse, tempura style.

With a rod so small it looks like it belongs with a board game, I attempt to bait the multitude of tiny hair-thin hooks that trail from the line with equally tiny wriggling larvae. It's a job for someone with 20/20 vision or glasses, neither of which I have, but thankfully a friendly local offers help.

Some Japanese will fish here for hours or even an entire day. All I catch is frozen feet.

Covering 13 square kilometres, Lake Akan takes time to get to know. I get another perspective of it on the two-hour Bokke Forest Snowshoe Walk with Tsuruga Adventure Base. It starts in a Sakhalin fir forest that was closed last summer when two brown bears were hanging out, but in winter it's a Narnia-like wonderland.

Snow lays light and thick on branches, sika deer peek out from behind trees, and red torii gates contrast against the white. I spot my first ever woodpecker hammering away on a tree trunk, dropping sizeable chunks of bark on our heads. Progress is slow, not because our snowshoes sink knee-deep in the powder but because it's all so wildly photogenic.

We emerge at the lake, a vast white expanse backed by Mount Oakan. "Please walk where I walk," says guide Toru, as he ventures onto the ice. Unlike at Ice Land, here I'm acutely aware we're walking on water. We follow a forested shoreline normally only witnessed from a boat, and a strange echo reverberates across the ice with every step. Some patches are alarmingly slushy. "Is this safe?" I ask Toru. "Yes," he says, adding, "but don't jump!"

Mostly we have 20-30 centimetres of ice underfoot but there are random holes to watch out for because this is, quite literally, a geothermal hotspot. We're surrounded by volcanoes and Lake Akan is a caldera lake that, in places, weeps hot springs.

Toru leads us back onto terra firma and around to where the ice has melted completely, revealing the lake's dark, silky underbelly and shoreline rocks tainted white from sulphur. It's just a warm up though for Bokke "mud volcano" where boiling mud pools bubble lazily with audible "bloops". tsuruga-adventure.com/en

We're getting a briefing for a paddle on the Arekinai River with Toro Nature Centre when our guide Jonathan says, "No dancing!" He's laughing but is also deadly serious. The water is three degrees; tipping is not an option.

The Arekinai is a tributary of the Kushiro River, which flows 154 kilometres from Lake Kussharo to the Pacific Ocean at Kushiro Port via the Kushiro Wetlands. A short paddle upstream lets us witness the huge and frozen Lake Toro - two white swans sit on the ice and a lone tent flags a fishing party - before we turn to ride downstream.

On cold mornings (around -18), the Arekinai is essentially one long slushy but our morning is a "balmy" zero degrees with blue skies and no wind. Leafless trees stand like skeletons along a shoreline thick with tall caramel-coloured grass. Snow carpets the ground, shapeshifting into ice that slinks into the water in sweeping arcs. I test a patch with a whack of my paddle and it bounces off as though hard as concrete.

Winter is Jonathan's favourite season to paddle. "In summer we have more cloudy or foggy days but in winter 80 per cent of the days are sunny. And there's more chance of seeing wildlife," he says. Our journey yields a few mink, a soaring kite, kingfisher, great spotted woodpecker and chickadees. The Steller's sea eagles, sitting at about a metre-tall and perched in bald trees, are unmissable.

On one bend, two of the raptors watch from opposite sides of the river at a spot Jonathon presumes must be good for fishing. Is it a pair, we wonder? "Unlikely," he says. "They're perched at the same height so neither is dominant."

Gliding silently along the edge of the Kushiro Wetlands, it's evident there could be few better ways to spot its wildlife.

Hokkaido's geothermal heat means many birds migrate here from Siberia to escape the worst of the cold. White whooper swans famously flock to Lake Kussharo's Sunayu Beach - a striking vision amid the snowy landscape - but bird-watchers the world over come to witness Hokkaido's red-crowned cranes.

Standing 1.5 metres tall and with a two-metre wingspan, they're an impressive bird on any day, but on wintry snowfields these leggy white and black birds have all the light-footed grace of ballet dancers as they perform their courtship dances.

They were declared extinct in Hokkaido in the 1910s, but a dozen or so were discovered a few decades later living in the depths of Kushiro Wetlands and, since then, government-funded feeding programs have helped support species recovery.

Every morning at Akan International Crane Centre about 150 birds show up for a feed of corn, scattered by tractor across the fields. I watch them arrive over the hills, honking, wings spread against a pale lemon sky. After grazing, the dancing begins, the birds leaping lightly into the air, sweeping wings, bowing heads. Shutters click on zoom lenses. I watch outside in the -10 degree air with regular retreats to an indoor viewing window.

Every day, the centre's director, Miyuki Kawase, observes and photographs the cranes. "When I first started I was amazed so many photographers would come out in freezing conditions to see the cranes but now I am one of them," she laughs. Over 15 years she's amassed a wealth of images but has never deleted any data. "When I review my photos, I can remember the exact time perfectly." aiccgrus.wixsite.com/aiccgrus

There's no doubt that winter in Hokkaido is a photographer's dream. My camera gets its most strenuous workout on a snowshoe hike with Shinobu Katase at Lake Mashu. After a recent blizzard, the trees are caked almost completely in white hoar frost - striking against a bluebird sky. Tree branches "fluff up" in fat icy fingers, sparkling like glass where the sun has started to melt them.

We're here to skirt the rim encircling a crater lake 20 kilometres in circumference and up to 211 metres deep. At its centre, the head of a lava dome forms an island tower 30 metres high. We cut a fresh route through the snow, ducking around heavily laden branches and constantly drawn by the blue gem to our right, 200 metres below.

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It's only because of snow cover that we are able to negotiate this trackless terrain, and if it weren't for winter we'd perhaps not see the lake either. "It's often misty in summer," explains our guide Noby. "That's when fog flows across from the Pacific Ocean, over the mountains and across the lake." Today though, it shimmers a proud navy blue, encased by snowy white flanks that slide into the water.

"I love eastern Hokkaido because everything is so close to nature," says Noby, referring to more than its stunning forests and lakes. As if on cue, several enormous Steller's sea eagles glide in wide circles off the lip of the crater, drawn by the hunting opportunities of this rare unfrozen body of water.

For Hokkaido's wildlife, winter might have its challenges. For me, it's offered a dazzling wonderland unlike anything I've experienced. shinobukatase.com

Getting there: Japan Airlines flies from Sydney to Kushiro via Tokyo. From Kushiro it's a one-hour drive north to Lake Akan. Allow a few nights in Kushiro too to enjoy the port city and its seafood. See jal.co.jp/au/en/

Getting around: Pick up a rental car at Kushiro Airport or catch the Akan Airport Liner bus to Lake Akan (uu-hokkaido.com/airplanebus) and make use of tours offering hotel pick-ups. Alternatively, arrange a personalised itinerary with a sightseeing taxi service like Akan Hire. See uu-hokkaido.com/airplanebus; akanhire.co.jp

Staying there: Right on the lakeshore in Lake Akan, Hanayuuka has stylish and cosy rooms and an in-house onsen. Rooms start around $160. See hanayuuka.com/en

Explore more: untouchedhokkaido.jp/en

The writer travelled as a guest of Kushiro Tourism and Convention Association.