Anti-G8 activists shout slogans during a demonstration in Sapporo
© AFP/File Jewel Samad DATE, Japan (AFP) - Some 1,000 protesters were staying in the rain in tents pitched some 30 kilometres (18 miles) from Toyako, a mountain town in northern Japan where leaders of the Group of Eight industrial powers are gathering this week.
In an unusual move, Japanese authorities agreed to let the activists stay for free in these remote meadows, in a bid to make up for a hotel shortage and keep better control over protesters to prevent any violence.
The campsite lies on the other side of Lake Toya from the hilltop luxury hotel where the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States are meeting.
Anti-G8 activists march during a demonstration in Sapporo on
© AFP Jewel SamadColourful flags and banners reading "No G8!" fluttered from tents on the crowded site as a few dozen local farmers crouching to pick spinach watched them with their jaws dropped.
Organisers of the campsite put up signs offering to buy vegetables from local farmers and asking them to join the movement.
But the women working on a small lot of farmland across from the campsite said they did not feel tempted.
"I don't know what they're doing. I don't know anything about them," one middle-aged woman said sullenly as she watched the protesters.
A policeman pushes back an anti-G8 activist during a demonstration in Sapporo
© AFP Jewel SamadThe protesters, who take buses each morning to other towns to attend rallies, come from a mix of countries including South Korea, the Philippines and the United States. Others include Ainu -- the indigenous people here on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido.
Kenichi Kawamura, whose Ainu name is Shinrit e=oripak Aynu, performed a traditional ritual to pray to the gods for successful demonstrations against the Group of Eight summit.
"The G8 are coming to our land to do whatever they please. Please protect us," said the 57-year-old, wearing an Ainu gown and a headband during the ritual, which was carried out in his indigenous language.
The Ainu were displaced when settlers from Japan's main island of Honshu settled Hokkaido in the 19th century. They still lag behind in education and income in the Asian economic power.
Police detain an anti-G8 activist (C) during a demonstration in Sapporo
© AFP Jewel SamadA group of South Koreans joined the Ainu, holding candles.
The furthest the protesters are likely to get is the edge of Lake Toya, where they plan to shout slogans in hope that the leaders on the hilltop on the other side can hear them.
Thousands of demonstrators chanted slogans Saturday in Hokkaido's largest city of Sapporo, with police arresting three demonstrators and one journalist. But the protest was relatively peaceful compared with those at previous G8 summits.
A group of German punk rockers lying down on the lawn at the campsite remembers that last year's protests were very different.
"Demonstrations here are smaller than the German protests we saw last year," said Posti, the drummer of punk band Sprengsatz who goes by one name.
Militant activists threw Molotov cocktails and stones during demonstrations in Germany last year that drew tens of thousands of protesters from the world.
©AFP