Kaiten-Sushi Nemuro Hanamaru, a sushi train restaurant that could only have been created by a fishing town

Kaiten-Sushi Nemuro Hanamaru is a sushi train restaurant that has its roots in Nemuro. It can be found across Hokkaido, and even in Tokyo. The founder, Tetsushi Shimizu, is a Nemuro local whose father was a fisherman. He opened Hanamaru in 1983 with the desire to create a place where families could gather and have fun in the town where he was born and raised. The name of the restaurant was also put to a vote among the locals. He reveals that they came up with the name Hanamaru because the first store was located on Hanasaki Street.

If you visit Hanamaru, you should check out the recommended menu written on the blackboards inside the restaurant and on the handwritten paper menus placed on the tables. The recommendations change each day and are different depending on which store you go to. In other words, the recommendations you might find at the Nemuro store, for example, have been personally selected by that store on that particular day. Hanamaru’s menu is mostly focused on seafood from Nemuro, delivering the best seasonal flavors on offer. Along with delicious sushi, the restaurant also puts a lot of effort into creating delectable soups. There’s an ample selection of soups characterized by the rich flavor of their fish broths, including one of Hokkaido’s soul foods, sanpeijiru (fish soup). Each dish also comes in a generous portion.

▶Pictured from the front going clockwise: Two-Tiered Scallops (308 yen), Chopped Lake Furen Pacific Herring in Nori (308 yen), Pacific Cod Head Sanpeijiru (308 yen) and Red Salmon Roe Pickled in Soy Sauce (418 yen). These all feature ingredients unique to Hokkaido. Chopped Lake Furen Pacific Herring in Nori is an original item made on-site at Hanamaru.

Even the layout of the store has been carefully designed. Along with the unique sushi train experience of being able to watch a variety of sushi passing by on the sushi lanes, you can also watch the energetic staff making sushi from behind the lanes. The staff exuberantly calling out and interacting with their customers is another part of the Hanamaru experience.
It’s a place where you can just drop by and enjoy freshly made sushi in the lively atmosphere typical of a fishing town. The restaurant’s design reflects Shimizu’s desire to “create a place where people can have fun.”

Nemuro-base, a bar where local food and connections are nurtured

Nemuro local Shinichiro Abe manages Nemuro-base, a bar that also serves meals. The bar is well-loved by the community, with 80% of the customers being Nemuro locals. On the day I visited, Mr. Abe was cooking and interacting casually with the regulars from behind the bar.

Mr. Abe grew up in Nemuro until he was in high school. His parents ran a sushi restaurant and from a young age he grew up watching his father working in the kitchen. He dreamed of being able to make sushi with his father someday. To make that dream a reality, he went to culinary school in Sapporo and did an apprenticeship after graduating. He returned to Nemuro when he was 23. His dream came true and soon he found himself working with his father. After that, he decided to run his own business, opening Nemuro-base in January 2020.
The name Nemuro-base has two meanings: It’s both a place where tourists can encounter Nemuro’s delicious food, and a base where the locals are always welcome. With this in mind, he’s conscious of local production for local consumption, while at the same time offering seasonal delicacies from all over Japan. Mr. Abe said, “During my training in Sapporo, I came across a lot of different ingredients. Looking around the country, you’ll find many delicious fish. I wanted Nemuro’s locals to taste them too.”

▶Minke Whale Saezuri in Ponzu Sauce (1,280 yen). Saezuri is whale tongue. The strong umami flavor from the fat in this dish is paired perfectly with the refreshing flavor of the ponzu sauce.

▶Nemuro Al Ajillo (1,480 yen). This dish brings out the full flavors of the ingredients sourced in Nemuro: Hanasaki shiitake mushroom, whelk and scallop. I also noticed that the local ingredients here tend to be slightly bigger than those found elsewhere.

Something that Mr. Abe takes seriously in running Nemuro-base is “encounters.” He has learned about new ingredients by exchanging information with his friends and making purchases from people he trusts. He says he has a renewed appreciation for the importance of such human connections. With an earnest expression, he told me, “It’s not simply about making delicious things; what I want to treasure the most is my relations with people.”

He concluded, “Right now, I’m still just doing about 10-20% of what I want to do overall.” By delivering new flavors while staying true to local cuisine, Nemuro-base has a charm that makes you want to visit every time you go to Nemuro.

Sakean Rurero, an izakaya that brings people together with drinks

Located at the end of the Hirokoji Shopping Street is a small bar-only izakaya. Running Sakean Rurero on her own is Tomoka Aoyama. She creates omakase (chef’s choice) course meals based on the season and her customers.

Originally from Sapporo, Ms. Aoyama moved to Nemuro when she was 34. She said that she’s always admired restaurants because, “I always really loved cooking, so one day I wanted to make a living out of it.” That dream came true when she opened Sakean Rurero in 2016. She initially had a menu, but when her bar attracted more regulars, she decided to create the omakase course meals to let her customers enjoy new things each time they visited.

▶Hanasaki Crab and Cheese Chawanmushi (steamed egg custard). The sweetness of the crab pairs perfectly with the rich flavor of the cheese.

▶Ms. Aoyama showed me the sake she had available on the day I visited. “I recommend different drinks for different meals. This is because I create my dishes by thinking about what kind of beverage would pair well with them.”

Ms. Aoyama herself enjoys having a drink and her izakaya is well-stocked with a range of drinks from sake to wine. She places particular emphasis on sake, offering six or seven varieties from Hokkaido and other regions of Japan. She has a knack for suggesting the right sake for people who don’t normally enjoy it. She’s even successfully converted some customers to the rice wine. “I think that enjoying a social drink can open up many things. It’s similar to sharing a meal; you can make new friends and meet people from different industries. It’s fun seeing that human side of things.”

Ms. Aoyama continued, “I want my izakaya to be a place where people are inspired to drop by for a drink when they’re feeling tired.” She told me that often locals come to her izakaya on their own. If you pluck up the courage to join the locals at the bar, you may discover something new about Nemuro.

Boschetto, a solitary Italian restaurant on a vast expanse of land

Drive east from downtown Nemuro for 10 minutes and you’ll find a building with a red roof standing on its own amid a vast grassland, with a view of the ocean stretching out to the horizon. This is Boschetto, an Italian restaurant run by Koji Hayashi and his wife Hiroko.

Koji and Hiroko are both from Nemuro. After gaining experience in the restaurant business, they were looking for a place to open a restaurant in Nemuro and came across this building. They knew straight away that it was the perfect place because of the beautiful scenery. “I didn’t think much about nature when I was young, but now I like the open expanses. Many of our friends were against the decision to set up here because it’s so far from town,” said Koji, laughing. The couple refurbished the building, previously a workshop, and opened Boschetto in 2015. Many Nemuro locals, as well as people from Nakashibetsu on the weekdays, come to enjoy the delicious food.

▶Boschetto Salad half-size (1,200 yen). The dish is filled with leafy greens and root vegetables, and even includes a quiche. It comes in a generous size that doesn’t seem like a half portion.

▶The view from outside the restaurant. You could spend hours watching the wind blowing through the vast grassland.

Their menu mainly features pizza and pasta, which few restaurants in Nemuro were serving when they first opened. They also offer various colorful Italian dishes made with Nemuro ingredients. I ordered the Boschetto Salad, which was bursting with colorful vegetables, and two dishes made from Nemuro ingredients: the Crab and Tomato Cream Pizza and Venison Bolognese Pasta. All the dishes looked so colorful and came out in such generous servings that I couldn’t help but squeal with joy when they were placed in front of me. I’d recommend sharing some dishes between two to four people.

The restaurant’s interior design is fun and quirky. As you look around, you’ll notice many used items, such as old bags of wheat and cans of tomatoes. Here you can savor vast views of Nemuro’s nature and delicious Italian food, all in one spot.

Cuisine and encounters in Nemuro

With an abundance of fresh seafood and even their own local sake called Kitano-Katsu, Nemuro is a foodie’s paradise. The restaurant and bar owners living in this area have a thorough knowledge of the value of each ingredient, and are focusing all their efforts into bringing out delicious flavors. At Nemuro, you can taste cuisine unique to the area and meet the locals. By popping into one of the restaurants or bars, you’re bound to uncover the true appeal of Nemuro.