Sōbetsu, Hokkaido

Sōbetsu is a town in the Iburi Subprefecture of Hokkaido, Japan, written 壮瞥町 and read Sōbetsu-chō in Japanese. It lies in Usu District and covers 205.04 square kilometres, a large area for a place with an estimated 2,743 residents in October 2020, which works out to a density of about 13 persons per square kilometre. The town is best known as the home of the Showa Shinzan Yukigassen Tournament, a major Japanese snowball fight competition. The sumo wrestler Kitanoumi Toshimitsu is listed as a notable person from Sōbetsu. The town runs an official website in Japanese, and the municipality is a small community whose roughly 13 residents per square kilometre reflect a thinly settled area.