Furano Lavender Fields

Lavender was grown commercially in Furano from the 1940s for perfume oil, and the industry collapsed in the 1970s when synthetic fragrance took the market. Almost every grower ploughed the fields under. Tomita Farm kept one field, largely out of stubbornness, and when a railway poster photographed it in 1976 the flowers turned into a tourist economy that has since spread across the valley - which is why the fields exist at all. The bloom is short: purple peaks in mid-July and is largely over by early August, and farms plant strips of poppies, salvia and cosmos alongside so that the hillsides read as bands of colour rather than a single tone. The Tokachi mountains stand behind. Outside the few weeks of bloom the valley is green farmland, and the difference between arriving on the right week and the wrong one is total.

What you actually see

• Banded hillsides - lavender planted in strips with poppies and salvia between.
• A rescued crop - one field kept when the perfume market collapsed in the 1970s.
• A short peak - purple from about mid-July to the first days of August.
• The Tokachi range - mountains standing behind the flower slopes.

When to go

Mid-July for the peak. A day. Early morning before the tour coaches arrive.

Honest expectations

The season is genuinely only a few weeks and outside it there is nothing to see. Peak weekends are extremely crowded and parking overflows. Farms are spread across the valley and a car is close to essential. Much of the site is a commercial complex of shops and ice cream stands.

Nearby

Biei and its patchwork hills are north; Asahikawa is beyond them.