喜茂別町民公園　パークゴルフ場

Kimobetsu is a small farming town tucked into the Shiribeshi region of southwestern Hokkaido, sitting in a broad valley carved by the Shiribetsu River and ringed by volcanic peaks — most dramatically by Mount Yotei, the near-perfect cone that locals call "Ezo Fuji." The landscape is emphatically rural: potato fields, dairy farms, and river bottomland define the character of the place, and the air carries the cool clarity that makes Hokkaido summers genuinely pleasant for outdoor recreation even when much of Japan swelters.

This is a park golf course, and park golf (パークゴルフ) is a sport Hokkaido essentially invented — developed in Makubetsu in 1983, it spread across the island's towns as an accessible, low-barrier alternative to conventional golf, embraced by all ages but especially popular with older residents and families. The format uses a single club, a relatively large ball, and shorter holes, making it a social and community activity as much as a competitive one.

A municipal park golf facility in a town of this size serves as a genuine neighborhood gathering point — a place where regulars know each other by name and the game is secondary to the occasion of being outside together in one of Japan's most quietly beautiful regions.