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.

Japan - Day 4

We did even worse on day 4 than on day 2, waking just 10 minutes before breakfast was due to end - and the agreed time to start off for our next destination.

We raced down to the lobby past Shabolz et al, who were all already checking out, and to the dining room where we begged to be allowed to eat what hadn't yet been cleared away. Then we were off - several hours of driving to Sōunkyō Onsen in Daisetsuzan National Park.

It was a day of listening to the continuing adventures of Humphrey the hamster, and seeing road works.

Kawaii!

It was also the day when the kids finally got their wish - kaiten sushi!

Andy, in the booth next to ours, ordered chips - which he assured me are all the rage at kaiten sushi these days.Thankfully our kids didn't see this, so there was no clamouring in our booth. But seriously, chips with sushi? What is the world coming to?

 There was edamame too. No idea if this is traditional to eat with sushi, but it was somehow more acceptable.

 Lukan likes salmon roe sushi.

He eats the eggs one at a time. 

And shudders and grimaces when they pop in his mouth. Every time.

Cheeky Andy.

We arrived at Sōunkyō in the late afternoon, driving up through a valley of cliffs to the onsen itself.

Pretty!

First stop - the tourist center to check out the hike we had planned for the next two days.

There's bears in them there hills, so next stop:

The bear bell shop. Then the hotel:

While checking in we discovered our allotted dinner time was 6pm, which seemed very early but as the hotel was very big and a huge bus load of Malaysians had just arrived, we thought we'd better obey - so we pretty much just dumped our stuff and headed straight to the restaurant. There were nightly fireworks at this hotel too, but we opted for the onsen instead.

It was actually dark, this picture is from two nights in the future. 

I could (of course!) hear the kids on the other side of the fence. As there was no one else soaking outside, I considered clambering over the rocks and peeking around to say hello... only then I decided it wouldn't be very dignified to be caught butt naked, spread-eagled over a rock, peering into the men's side.

Not long afterwards, given an inability to get on to wifi, it was bed time.

More real life

So a while back now, there were those posts about the vegetable patch, and the bounty, and the bottling, and the trying to find new ways of eating zucchini, and so on.

I've been feeling a bit bad about these posts for a while now, in case you were still under the impression that I was managing The Good Life while working full time. I am not. Not at all. And especially not now that I'm the sole gardener, with our neighbours having temporarily moved to the other side of the world.

Last year I tried, but rain. Which meant first, weeds. And second, slugs. I have never seen so many slugs. I'm not sure what happened - did their numbers build up in the previous years to a suddenly evident plague? Or was it because the field next door wasn't mown until very late in the year, meaning an extra quarter acre of prime slug breeding habitat? All I know is it was nightmare material. You'd walk out and there'd be giant crawling slugs everywhere, really, just everywhere.

I tried beer traps, I tried snipping all I saw in two. It made no difference to their numbers. It was very dispiriting, but I took heart in my species' track record with extinctions and moved it up a level.

That's a good half kilo there, and I collected several bags like this. I didn't manage an extinction, but it helped. But the rain also meant, third, not that many weekends where I could actually plant anything. And then fourth, tomato blight. Add in me not having much time to harvest what there was, and everyone else who forgot, and there was not much bounty last year.

But! 2014 was a new year and I was ever hopeful! I started well, I really did - for the first time ever, I cleared the entire area of weeds, and then only planted what I figured could reasonably manage.

Only then, rain again, and slugs. Bags and more bags of slugs. But still it was going well, until around mid-June, after which we were either away or had guests or were doing something every weekend until mid-September.

Of course, I was very happy to be away and have guests and have done something else than endlessly tend to the vegetable patch ... but still, it was a bit of a shock when we retuned from Japan to find: 

Well, OK, so it actually doesn't look so bad from a distance... but let's get a bit closer.

That's the onion section, overrun with strawberries. Can't see the onions? There's actually quite a lot of them...

There's one! 

Poor, poor overgrown then blighted tomatoes.

Broccoli gone to seed. Though to be honest, I did get one harvest - this was meant to be the second. 

This was perhaps the most cruel. A broccoli stump, in a slug protector, completely eaten by slugs. And to add further salt to the wound, overgrown with weeds. Dandelions, for the most part.

Did you know artichokes have pretty purple flowers? I certainly didn't. (Leeks have pretty purple flowers too, it turns out.)

Flowers long gone to seed, taking over the rocket.

And finally at the back, a raggedy sunflower forest.

So there you go, another not very successful year. Maybe 2016?

Japan -Day 3

After yesterday's rush, we had set the alarm to be sure of not missing breakfast today. Our kids took full advantage of the extra time and varied buffet. They started with pancakes and croissants, moved on to onigiri (rice wrapped in seaweed)... and then discovered that the soft-serve ice cream machine was operational. I have to admit, my initial response was a hearty parental no when they asked, but then I figured, why not? There were three very happy children that morning.

After breakfast we had a couple of hours' drive to our next destination, Niseko.

Not such a long drive, only our kids are not that good in a car. They - predictably - muck around and fight and make a lot of noise. We - predictably - hiss and yell for them to be quiet. Eventually we do get a sullen silence following the threat of a Very Nasty Consequence, but by then it's a bit of a Pyrrhic victory with misery all around. Not fun, not fun at all. Thankfully this trip was rendered bearable by Humphrey the Hamster! Audio books = bloody life saver, I tell you.

Niseko is a ski resort near Mount Yōtei. Mount Yōtei is big. Verrry big.

It didn't take so long to get there, but then we had to get around it to our hotel.

What a lovely welcome! We actually saw this at many of the hotels we stayed at, but this was by far the most prominent, being right as you walked in.

Apart from the hills being volcanoes and not, well, regular hills, Hokkaido looked disconcertingly like Switzerland a lot of the time. Including inside.  

After checking in, we asked for information on easy nearby hikes. The receptionist very helpfully got a map and pointed out a couple... that were 15 minutes long. C managed not to be too rude when he said we were looking for something a big longer and that we would figure it out ourselves.

But first, lunch. The hotel was out of town, so thought we'd head towards the start of the hike and hope to find something on the way. My stomach sank a little when the first place we saw was a little curry house - Japanese curry is not my favourite. But this turned out to be a real curry house with real curry - yum!

Yoko left us at the trail head. The rest of us set off into the forest, with the aim of ascending Mt. Niseko Annupuri, a few kilometers away and 500m up.

It was hot. We sweated. I sweated even more than normal, thanks to a bout of hot flashes triggered by coming off the pill a few weeks earlier. As an example of how hot these hot flashes are: normally on a long flight I am wearing at least 3 layers - the last one a fleece - and wrapped up in two blankets, and still a little cold. On the trip to Japan, I wore a tank top the entire way and was still uncomfortably hot a lot of the time. So, I was pretty hot on this walk.

Shabolz's parents, Micheline and Jean-Paul, were also hot and stopped about half-way up. The remaining hikers made it to the top in less than 1 hour 40 min - not too bad for the first walk!

The summit (1,308m) - we could just barely see Mount Yōtei in the afternoon haze. If you click on the picture and angle your screen the right way, you may be able to glimpse it too.

Looking along the old crater to the second peak. With every step along the path came a rustling from...

... grasshoppers! Lots of them!

What goes up must come down, so down we went and back to the hotel for, of course, a hot bath. (No picture, sorry.)

In the evening we met up with friends of Shabolz and Yoko, and went out for yakitori and okonomiyaki. Yum yum yum!

Well, yum, yum yum for us - our kids were less enthusiastic.

There wasn't even any edamame. Oh well.

Then it was back to the hotel for a nightcap...

Ume-shu, mmmmmm. And a cool bartop, no?

... and bed.