”Brown bears do not have very good vision,” explained Mr. Shibata, “but they have excellent hearing and very keen noses. Their sense of smell is said to be eight times stronger than that of a dog. They love sweet things, so it’s very dangerous to take items like sweets or juice on the course. The smell would attract them toward us, and they would eat any sweets that were dropped. To prevent that, therefore, it is prohibited to bring any sweet food or drinks on the tour.”
I had imagined brown bears to be carnivorous, eating things like salmon and deer, but I realized from Mr. Shibata’s explanation that this image was mistaken. “Shiretoko’s brown bears eat Asian skunk-cabbage and Yezo sika deer in spring, cicada larvae, crayfish, and ants and other insects in summer, and mountain grapes, acorns, salmon, trout, and so on in autumn,” he said. “About 80% of their food is vegetation. In winter they hibernate, so basically they do not eat then. They are omnivorous, consuming more vegetable than animal food.”
There are many insects inhabiting the dense woodland of Shiretoko. Cicadas that had avoided being eaten by brown bears as larvae and grown into adults flew around as if greeting us. Amusingly, one of them even landed on Mr. Shibata’s chest. When we proceeded deeper into the forest, we came upon the fantastic sight of Niko (the 2nd lake) against the background of the Shiretoko mountain range. If it were permitted, I thought, it would be great to sit down in a rocking chair here and spend hours just gazing at the scene.