S P O T ／ SPOT-302

Lake Mashu (First Observation Deck)

摩周湖（摩周湖第一展望台）ましゅうこ

Lake Mashu is a caldera lake in eastern Hokkaido that almost dares you to look at it. Ringed by steep crater walls roughly 20 kilometers around, it has no real rivers feeding in or draining out — its water held in place by rain, snowmelt, and springs — and that near-total isolation once gave it some of the clearest water on Earth, a 1931 survey clocking a transparency said to beat Lake Baikal's. You cannot walk down to it. There is no shore path, no boat, no way in; the lake is something you are only ever permitted to view, from the railing of the First Observation Deck, like a thing held behind glass. The Ainu called it Kamuy-to, the lake of the gods, and the landscape earns the name: for much of summer, sea fog drifts inland off the Pacific and swallows the entire basin, so that the famous "Foggy Lake Mashu" is, on most days, simply a white void where a lake should be. Then the fog tears open, and a 211-meter-deep slab of impossible indigo appears below you — and just as quickly, it can vanish again.