Live camera
Lake Kussharo from Bihoro Pass live camera
Japan's largest caldera lake seen from the pass above. It freezes in winter, and under the right conditions the ice cracks and buckles into ridges.
Sample August 2026What you are looking at
Japan's largest caldera lake, seen from a pass looking down. It freezes in winter, and given the right conditions the ice cracks and heaves up in a ridge.
It heaves because the ice expands and contracts with the difference between day and night temperatures. Ice that has swollen with nowhere to go breaks, lifts along the crack, and becomes a single ridge crossing the lake. Even on the same lake it will not happen if the ice is too thin or too thick.
The pass is at 525 metres, some 400 metres above the water. Nakanoshima, the island in the middle of the lake, is about twelve kilometres round — the largest island in any lake in Japan. On a clear day the whole width of the lake, island included, fits in one frame.
The water in this lake is acidic. Strongly acidic water comes in from around Iozan upstream, so there are few species of fish, and for all its size the surface has little sense of life about it. On the eastern shore at Sunayu, though, dig into the sand and warm water wells up. That one spot does not freeze even in winter, so a hole of open water is left in the ice sheet, and the swans gather there.
June to September is the season, when the water is visible from the pass on most days. Spring and autumn mornings, by contrast, bring mist off the lake, and from the pass the lake can look buried under a sea of cloud. It is worth trying for, but whether it appears is up to the day.
In a blizzard, snow sticks to the lens and nothing shows for days. Updates come once an hour. This is the eastern edge of Hokkaido, so it is light from three in the morning in summer.
About this camera
| Place | Bihoro, Hokkaido |
| Format | Still, hourly |
| Time zone | Asia/Tokyo (UTC+9) |
| Category | Nature |
| Operator | Ministry of the Environment — Internet Nature Institute |
| Terms of use | PDL 1.0 |
The operator's own page
The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.
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