MOMBETSU, Japan -- This winter's tale of two small cities on Japan's northernmost large island of Hokkaido starts hundreds of kilometers to the north in the ice-cold estuary of the Amur River in Russia's Far East.
There, in Shantarsky Bay, freshwater from melting snow mixes with seawater and freezes into ice floes that travel east around the island of Sakhalin and then south into the Sea of Okhotsk. Driven by wind and currents, the drift ice bumps up against the Hokkaido coastline from late January until March, creating a winter tourism business for Mombetsu and Abashiri, which lie about 100 km apart.
