Japan - Day 7

Feeling a little achy when we got up, we had another hot bath before a leisurely breakfast... and then it was into the car for a five hour drive east to the Shiretoko peninsula - a chain of volcanoes jutting out into the sea, the southernmost point for sea ice, mostly wild, "the end of the Earth" in the Ainu language.

At around the 1 hour mark we stopped at a small aquarium featuring the local fish.

What do Japanese people say when they visit an aquarium? "Yum!!"

The fish say the same thing.

There was a huge souvenir shop, filled with Ainu-themed and other awful wood carvings.

Who buys this stuff? C did find some nice handkerchiefs, which he bought with the intention of transforming into pocket handkerchiefs - a new fad of his. Sorry, fashion! The new fashion! And Lukan found a bear claw back scratcher that he insisted on having.

After cold drinks and ice cream we set off again. A couple of hours later we stopped at a Bento Box - a take away food chain, where the food is actually good. The idea was to find a nice place by the side of the road for a picnic. We drove and drove... nothing. Eventually we pulled into a kind of truck stop - a huge dusty parking lot, with a row of drink vending machines and stinky toilet. There was a bit of grass on the side in the shade, so we settled in there. I took a photo...

... and was about to sit down myself to tuck into my tempura, when Téo spotted a tick on my leg. We hastily moved away... into the hot, dusty parking lot as there was nowhere else. Oh well, at least the food was yummy.

We finally made it to Shiretoko in the late afternoon. After a short stop...

... we headed to our hotel, where I discovered who buys terrible Hokkaido wood carvings. Multiple, terrible Hokkaido wood carvings.

Shabolz and Yoko's friends - the ones we'd had dinner with on day 3 - were staying at the same hotel. The six kids ran around playing spies outside, and claimed to have seen a snake. C went for a hot bath, but it was too hot for me - a cold shower was more welcome.

The hotel was old and nothing much to look at, but dinner was delicious.

I know it looks the same as other meals, but it really was particularly yummy.

Apart from dinner, the evening was taken up with a much-needed session of clothes washing and drying. Shabolz and C took care of most of it, letting Yoko and I enjoy our beers and lemon sours. As we said to Jean-Paul when he remarked on this turn of traditional roles, we chose our men well!

Japan - Day 6

After a traditional Japanese breakfast - i.e., not so different from dinner the night before, except that it came with a salad - we left the hotel to walk back to Sōunkyō onsen. Well, not the whole way, we took the cable car back up to where we'd ended the walk the day before - and no nonsense with scenic routes, today we walked along the road to the cable car.

My big wish had been that we would wake to blue skies, and so get a look at the fumeroles we'd heard but not seen yesterday at the base of Mt Asahi. It was cloudy though when we got up. I'd resigned myself to another day of mist... but then as we rose higher in the cable car we saw steam! Huge plumes of steam whooshing from the enormous rent in the volcano! Woo-hoo!

The plan hadn't been to walk back up to the fumeroles but rather head around Mt Asahi lower down, but how could we not go see them? 

(You can click all photos to see them full size)

Yes mum, I know you told me to take panoramas as portraits. I won't forget again. (The path on the right is where we had come down the day before.) 

Closer...

...and even closer.

Once every possible photo had been taken from every angle and distance, we finally set off on our walk ... around Mt Asahi, back up to the rim of Ohachidaira caldera, around the other side, back over Mt Kurodake and finally down to the chair lift and cable car to Sōunkyō onsen.

The pink in the 3D version is our route, more or less - you can't see the caldera. Mt Kurodake is again marked with the red arrow.

It turns out that more photos could in fact be taken of fumeroles. But look! As we walked around Mt Asahi we could see more of them!

And there was another pretty lake for a foreground!

The whole park was meant to be riddled with chipmunks, but we each only saw one or two as they darted across the path. This was the only one well behaved enough for a photo.

Just once the cloud cleared from the top of Mt Asahi:

You'll be happy to know this was also our last view - and so last photo - of the fumeroles. 

Not liking salad, fish or miso soup for breakfast, Lukan had just eaten a little rice - so was a bit grumbly. Frequent stops for peanut butter sandwiches fixed the problem though.

Still walking around Mt Asahi. The rim of the caldera is ahead of us on the right.

After a couple of hours of walking and sandwich stops, we reached a gully that had a hot spring running into the cooler stream water - an outdoor onsen!

We stopped here for lunch. C and Shabolz weren't keen on foot soaking, but I wasn't willing to give up this opportunity.

Téo decided to join me...

And the right at the last minute, Lukan too.

It was very nice... only then Shabolz mentioned he hadn't done it as he didn't want to risk softening his feet and getting blisters. Oops, hadn't thought of that. Thankfully though, it seems both the kids and I had feet so calloused that a bit of a soak didn't mean blisters later.

The track took us up the side of the gully to the top of the caldera rim. We passed a couple coming down, who said they'd seen a bear on the mountain slope across from us. A bear! I really really wanted to see a bear, even more than I had wanted to see the fumeroles! I stared and stared but alas, it had moved into the vegetation and wasn't coming out.

The view from the rim today was truly spectacular.

Mt Kurodake (the first mountain we'd climbed yesterday, and where we were headed today) is hidden in the cloud behind the caldera a bit more than 1/3 along the photo on the left. The rim directly across is where we'd walked yesterday, up to the high point on the right. Mt Asahi is behind this high point, but back in the cloud. 

We headed off around the caldera, me lagging behind taking various panoramas.

Me at the bottom...

...taking different versions of this. 

Just as I finished taking the photos for the panorama above, Téo - who was already at the top of the little peak - started screaming BEAR! MUMMY COME QUICK THERE'S A BEAR! I couldn't see it in the caldera from where I was so ran up as fast as I could (admittedly not very fast), but by the time I got to the others, the bear - possibly disturbed by all the excited screaming - had lumbered into a thicket. I waited a looooonggg time for it to come out, but no luck.

The bear, as photographed using the highest magnification on C's phone. It's the black dot on the right. You can click the photo to see it bigger, but it doesn't make much difference.

Oh well, there was at least a good view of the hot, sulphur-y part of the caldera. One hiker and one bear have apparently died down there in the past decade.

On we went around the rim.

 Shabolz and C did a quick detour up the peak on the left. 

The kids were absolute champions - apart from Lukan's grumbling when he was hungry this morning, they walked happily and without complaint the entire time, even in the cold and wind and mist yesterday. It really was a pleasure to do this hike with them.

We came down a bit to our final view of the caldera:

(Click for full size)

Then it was back across to Mt Kurodake...

More pretty alpine plants on the way

... up over the top and down to the chair lift. The same little bird from yesterday met us and followed us down, beak still crammed full of insects. This time it even landed on my shoulder and the camera bag strapped to my waist - clearly it must get fed by people to be so tame, but again I couldn't see how it could have fit anything else in its beak.

Yoko, Jean-Paul and Micheline met us at the hotel. A big huge thank you to these lovely three for their patience in letting us do the overnight hike - we hugely appreciate it! Especially as they had to eat the same buffet dinner three nights in a row! (Our kids though were super happy to have edamame and ice cream for dinner again.)

We had a later slot for dinner than two days previously, so could have a nice soak first.

Ahhhhh. There is truly nothing better after a long day of walking, the hot water does wonders for tired muscles and sore feet.

The kids were determined not to miss the fireworks tonight. We thought they would start later so were taken a bit by surprise when we heard them as we left the restaurant. I guess other people were too as there was a general rush out of the hotel - with everyone wearing their hotel yukatas and hotel slippers. This was just wrong! Hotel slippers are inside slippers! But since everyone else was doing it, we did it too. It wasn't worth the effort of walking up the road though.

It's a crappy picture, but that only seems right given that they were crappy fireworks. Plus the wind was the wrong way so it wasn't long before they were completely obscured by smoke.

You know the drill by now, right? Bedtime for kiddlywinks, and soon after, bed for our weary bodies too.

Japan - Day 5

Sōunkyō onsen is one of the few entry points into the high parts of Daisetzusan National Park, with a cable car and chairlift to take you most of the way up Kurodake ("black peak", 1,984 m high). The village is pretty much 100% hotels - biiiggg hotels. We'd seen several bus loads of tourists arriving the night before, and were pretty sure they'd be heading up early to see the view before going on to their next destination. So there was definitely no sleeping in today - we'd set our alarms to be up in time to get dressed, store our suitcases at reception, buy breakfast and lunch at the 7-11 across the road, and be at the cable car by 7 am.

We needn't have worried - the cable car and chairlift were empty apart from us and a couple of others. But we wanted an early start anyway as we had a long walk ahead of us: around 11 km and an elevation gain of 1,200 m, climbing first up Kurodake, then up to the rim of the enormous Ohachidaira caldera, around one side, and finally up and over Mt Asahi - Hokkaido's highest mountain at 2,290 m - and then down to another cable car which would take us to Asahidake onsen where we would stay the night.

The view from the top of the chairlift looking back to Sōunkyō onsen was pretty spectacular:

And didn't get worse as we climbed higher:

I haven't mentioned this before, but Hokkiado is amazingly forested. Here we were in a national park, but even outside of the parks there is forest everywhere.

This little bird followed us up quite a way:

I had the impression it wanted food from us, but its beak was already so stuffed with insects, I'm not sure it could have crammed anything else in.

There were also a lot of bees:

After around an hour or so we reached the top of Kurodake:

Looking in the direction we would be walking (click for full size).

After a short rest it was onwards... downwards at first and across to the caldera rim.

 It wasn't actually necessary to climb up through snow, Andy and Téo - followed by Shabolz - just decided they would.

Flowers! Lots of pretty alpine flowers!

It was a little chilly and windy. As we were climbing up to the rim of the caldera, we met someone coming down who said it was very windy on the rim. And indeed, it was. Misty as well by the time we got there.

Every now and again the mist would clear a little and we'd get a bit of a view:

Looking back the way we'd come - Mt Kurodake is in the cloud.

Looking in the direction we were going. Ohachidaira caldera is on the right; I don't actually know what is on the left as we never saw anything but mist on that side.

But then it would close back in and all was pretty much white.

Only once did it clear enough that we saw the entire bottom of the caldera - although never the other side.

This panorama is a bit too curvy, as it's more than 180 degrees. The bottom of the caldera had a yellow sulphuric river (click for full size)
.

On we went around the caldera.

The above photo, taken just before lunch, was the last time the mist cleared so much. 

There was no shelter up here - we huddled in a little depression to eat lunch, but couldn't really escape the wind. We didn't stop long.

At some point we came down off the caldera rim and then started up again, for the ascent of Mt Asahi. There was a bit of snow near the top, as well as the occasional waft of sulphur.

The closer we got to the top of Mt Asahi, the steeper it got:

And then finally we were at the top:

After a short rest we started down. If I thought it had been windy before, it was REALLY windy now, buffeting us around in a very unpleasant manner.

The others were faster than me, and I was soon left behind. I quite badly needed to pee, and was seriously considering just squatting anywhere - we'd barely seen anyone all day and the mist hid me anyway... when a brief moment of clarity demonstrated that I was not in fact alone:

Imagine my surprise! And relief that I was not, at that moment, suddenly exposed pants down and mid stream!

These were people doing an up and down of Mt Asahi from this side. A couple of young men coming up - one wearing thongs, the other wearing light sneakers, neither with warm clothes - asked how far it was to the top. I really wanted to tell them they shouldn't attempt it given their lack of proper clothing and shoes and how windy and cold it was further up. Abunai! I wanted to say. Dame! But. You see, they weren't Japanese. And when C, Shabolz and I lived in Japan, we were often told we couldn't do things, and we didn't like it. So I didn't say they shouldn't, I just warned them about the wind and said it was about 30 minutes. And then not long afterwards I felt really bad, because I'm sure it was quite a bit longer than 30 min to the top, and they really didn't have enough clothes. I mean, thongs! Even if it's only 2,290 m high, you don't climb Hokkaido's tallest mountain in the mist and wind and cold in thongs and a T-shirt! But I guess they did, as I didn't hear of two young foreigners dying that day.

Around this point I became aware of a kind of roaring sound. I thought it must be cars on a highway below. Lukan thought it was a train. But the brief moment of clarity that had revealed the other hikers to me, revealed fumeroles to C further down - it was these making the noise. The sound was incredible, but we never got another glimpse, or any real idea of what we were walking down - until we saw the photos and maps at the cable car.

The red arrow is Mt Kurodake, the first peak we'd climbed; from the top of Mt Asahi we'd been walking down the side of a huge cleft in the mountain. 

It was very pleasant to sit down while waiting for the cable car.

View from the cable car.

We still had to walk for about a kilometre from the base of the cable car to our hotel. C decided we wouldn't take the road, but a scenic trail. This started off nice and touristy easy... but quickly deteriorated.

There was no wind, true, but now it was humid and kind of hot. And there were mosquitoes. And the path was not easy. And my feet were sore. I was not a happy camper.

The dragonflies were pretty at least.

Eventually we made it to the hotel - and made well-earned use of the beer vending machine before getting ready for the onsen.

 The kids were somewhat more energetic than me at this point.

Not the most luxurious onsen, but definitely the most welcome!

Although the outside bath was a bit too hot. My lady parts were scalded taking this.

This hotel was the more traditional kind, where you get a set menu.

Where's the edamame??

We were right at the end of two lines of tables... and firmly positioned ourselves as the badly mannered foreigners when the kids, released after dinner, noisily ran the entire way between the two lines to leave the dining room, past every other person at the hotel, yukatas flapping and slippers slapping. Oh well.

As you can probably imagine, bed time was not too long afterwards.