Bit of a niche question, and I realize most people don’t really think of small regional cities as the pinnacle of nightlife destinations, but I’m stopping for one night in the general area of these two cities in the middle of December and trying to decide which would be more fun in terms of drinking/eating for which city to book a hotel in that night.
My instinct was initially to skip Monbetsu altogether as I’m mostly going in this direction to go to the Prison Museum and Museum of Northern Peoples in Abashiri, but I love going to bars and meeting people in smaller cities like these (many of my favorite Japan experiences involve booze and cities with <200k populations) and just from looking at the map it seems like Monbetsu has a better strip of nightlife than Abashiri does.
Anyone have any firsthand experience with this part of Hokkaido that could shed a light on this decision?
