Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is the capital of Sakhalin, a long, narrow island off Russia's Pacific coast, and its history has a double layer. Until 1945 the southern half of the island belonged to Japan, and this city was called Toyohara, the administrative centre of a Japanese territory known as Karafuto. After the Soviet forces took control at the end of the Second World War, most of the Japanese population left, the city was renamed, and the Koreans who had been brought to the island as labourers formed a community that remains large today.
You can still see the Japanese past if you look. The regional museum, a handsome building with a pagoda-style roof from the 1930s, was built as the Karafuto Museum, and a few old shrines and stone buildings survive in the city. The streets are laid out on a neat grid in the way Japanese planners favoured, with the mountains behind the city and the broad valley of the Susuya river running toward the sea. The population is about a hundred and seventy-five thousand.
Sakhalin's recent wealth comes from oil and gas, which are produced offshore and piped to the coast, and the city shows signs of it in its new buildings and busy shops. On a hill above the town, the mountain Bolshevik has a ski resort with a cable car, and in summer the view from the top over the valley and the sea is lovely. The nearby Lake Tunaicha is a quieter place for a walk.
For riders, the island's roads offer very different moods. The road to Kholmsk, on the west coast, crosses the mountain range through forests of fir and bamboo, and descends to the Tatar Strait, where the ferries leave for the mainland. The road to Aniva Bay in the south follows the coast through villages and dunes, past old Japanese lighthouses and broad beaches. The climate is damp and foggy, so expect mist and rain even in summer, and the surfaces vary from smooth to broken. The vegetation is rich and strange, with giant butterbur plants growing taller than a person.
Fuel, shops and cafés are plentiful in the city. Seafood is the highlight, including crab, sea urchin and salmon, and Korean-style salads are everywhere. Late summer and early autumn are the best times, though typhoon rain can arrive in September.