Hokkaido or Hakodate, is the northernmost and second largest island of the Japanese archipelago. On this irregularly shaped island, summers are cool and winters are long and severe because of the prevailing cold Oyashio (or Kuril) Current. Among the people on this, the most sparsely populated of the Japanese main islands, are the Ainu, an aboriginal group of uncertain ancestry.

Language: Japanese

Currency: Japanese Yen (JPY)