Futami Suspension Bridge

This guide to the Futami Suspension Bridge in Sapporo starts in 1880, when innkeeper Isezo Sato took over a hot-spring bath that a wandering monk had built for healing, not profit, and renamed the gorge after his hometown coast in Ise. It follows how Sato's borrowed story of the Wedded Rocks helped turn a quiet valley into a resort town of more than fifty hotels, reached by a narrow railway from Sapporo in 1918. The red steel span itself was strung across the gorge later, barely wide enough for two people to pass. Listen for the sound of the river running beneath the walkway.