The Former Sasanami Family Residence offers a quiet and intimate look into Kaminokuni’s past. The building itself feels modest but deeply expressive, with its wooden structure and traditional layout reflecting the everyday life of an earlier era. Walking through the house, there is a strong sense of how people once lived, worked, and gathered within these walls, making history feel personal rather than distant. What I appreciated most was the preserved atmosphere. It does not feel staged or overly restored, allowing the space to speak for itself. The Former Sasanami Family Residence is the kind of place that rewards slow exploration and curiosity, especially for visitors who enjoy local history and traditional architecture.

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A great experience. Should pay a visit if nearby. Great staff too

This is a herring fishermen’s lodge built in the 19th century. It was quite an interesting building. There is also an exhibition of Enku Buddhist statues, making it a place where you can experience southern Hokkaido’s history and culture.

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Among the many lodges and other buildings associated with herring fishing, this is an unusual cultural property. While many, such as Otaru’s Herring Mansion and the Hanada family lodge in Obira, were built from the Meiji to Taisho periods, the Sasanami Family Residence is an Edo-period building with a recorded repair in Ansei 4. Its layout allowed the boss, servants, and fishermen called yanshu to sleep and stay together, offering a valuable example that could be called a prototype of the fishermen’s lodge. It is little known as a tourist attraction, but worth seeing as a starting point of the prosperity associated with herring fishing. The detailed explanations from volunteers are also very good.

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A house about 200 years old. It had a different charm from a herring fishermen’s lodge. The woman who explained the interior seemed to be a local, and we heard interesting stories, such as how the sea used to reach that spot when she was a child.