Sumo, Sake and Sapporo Beer

[bPeteb]

The long drive from Sapporo to Kushiro via Furano and Lake Akan

 

[bPeteb]

Kushiro Century Castle Hotel and that dinner

 

[bPeteb]

If the dinner was a tad excessive the breakfast was completely over the top. You had two choices - European or Japanese. We chose the European that was described as an open sandwich. I've attached the menu card. It was crazy. A plate of charcutterie, a bouillabaisse, scrambled egg with sea urchin, steamed veg. Then a buffet like you'd see at a Park Hyatt. It included free pour sparkling wine on the 'dessert' table. Remember, this place was $120 per night including the breakfast! I'll say it again. What a cracker of a hotel.

 

[bPeteb]

Reason to come to Kushiro - to see the red-crowned cranes. The best time to see them is winter so we weren't even sure we were going to see any. GPS set with the phone number (that's how the GPS worked) of the Kushiro Crane Reserve Kushiro Japanese Crane Reserve | Things to do | Hokkaido, Kushiro - LakeAkan Travel Guide[Official] not far out of the city and off we went.

We didn't need to worry. There were lots of cranes. There were even chicks somewhere but if they were there, we didn't see them. At one point I had the camera, or my phone, up against a low camera hole and wasn't really taking that much notice when one of the cranes came in for the attack. Missed me by that much. Al thought it was hilarious. Close range photo included.

 

[bPeteb]

We then had another GPS disagreement. Al's, Jacqs (both Google based) and the cars all had a different idea on how we would leave Kushiro and head for Lake Toya. We started back towards Kushiro but decided it couldn't be right so turned around and soon found ourselves at the start/end of a brand new highway. The car's GPS didn't even know the road existed.

Hardly any traffic but all going faster than the signed 70 or 80. If there'd been a lot of tunnels yesterday there was 10 times as many on this drive. Some a few hundred metres. Some a couple of kilometres. Some four. All I know is I hated them although I suppose the alternative would have been a windier and much, much longer drive.

I gave up sticking to the speed limit. I saw no evidence of speed cameras. Hadn't see a single police car on any of the highways we'd driven on. I was sick of holding other drivers up.

The road slowly climbed higher and higher and the scenery got better and better. Snow-capped mountains all around us. Brilliantly coloured forests with bright slashes of pink here and there where cherry and rhododendron were flowering. Snow down near the road in places. We drove passed what I'll describe as an isolated ski resort that was four huge towers and various other buildings in the middle of a spectacular valley with the steep grassed mountainsides obviously ski runs. There was a train line running along beside of the highway to it. I want to go there in the winter.

We pulled up for lunch at a roadside service centre and had great little burgers, coffee and ice creams.

We eventually started down the other side of the mountains but the tunnels continued. Then finally the sea was in front of us. We'd had trouble deciding on staying at Noboribetsu or Toyako Onsen at Lake Toya and eventually chose the latter. As we drove passed Noboribetsu we all thought it looked pretty nice but the choice had been made long before.

 

[bPeteb]

Our reservation for the Hokkai Hotel Hokkai Hotel Hokkai hotel said that we needed to check-in before 6pm or we would have to come back the next day! We also wanted to go up the ropeway to Mt Usu USUZAN ROPEWAY. We needed to do the first before the second or we might not be back by 6. Pulled up and raced into the hotel and checked-in. Got the key and back out to the car to the ropeway.

We made it in time to catch the second last car up. The view was pretty darn good but disappointingly we didn't have time to walk to the caldera of the volcano. Lots of steam vents and the occasional whiff of sulphur made it clear how active this volcano is.

There's a bear park somewhere near the where you board the ropeway. From the top of the mountain we could see a whole lot of concrete a few hundred yards further along the carpark. Having experienced a Japanese zoo previously the bear park looked like a similar horror story. We didn't go near it and I'd suggest avoid at all cost.

We drove back through the town and it seemed very quiet but all we needed was somewhere to eat and somewhere to eat dinner.

This was our one and only traditional hotel stay - three single futons on tatami mats. The view was breath taking across Lake Toya and Nakajima Island to Mt Yotei.

As the name suggests Toyako Onsen is an onsen resort town and our hotel had its own onsen down in the grounds between the hotel and the lake. The outdoor onsen was quite beautiful as when you were sat in the pool you looked out across the lake but it was odd in that a whole lot of the hotel's rooms could also see you sat in the pool. Good luck to anyone who wanted to perve on this white whale!

Dinner didn't prove so easy. If we'd been more courageous there were quite a few places that were obviously restaurants but none of us were game to open the door so we ended up in a pseudo Italian place that was actually pretty nice and most importantly warm.

There were lots of what looked like abandoned buildings throughout the town. The reason why was revealed the following morning.

Then it was down to the lakefront for the nightly fireworks and we all have to say that they were pretty darn good. I can't imagine what it must cost this small town to put this on every night but I'm guessing it's worth it. I got the feeling the whole time we were on Hokkaido that everyone was waiting for winter.

 

[bPeteb]

Lake Toya - Hokkai Hotel, the not so private outdoor onsen, the Toyako Car Gallery and the nightly fireworks

 

[bPeteb]

None of us had a great night's sleep. Futons obviously aren't our thing.

Al went for a another soak where he was surprised to find another guy down there taking pictures of himself sitting in the outdoor pool with Lake Toya and Mt Yotei in the background. For his Tinder or Grindr profile maybe?

J's travel sickness was getting worse so she missed breakfast and took some drugs. It was another decent spread. The weather was miserable so we decided against doing anything out on the lake and settled on a visit to the Volcano Science Museum Volcano Science Museum

We could have spent another hour but poor J was out in the car. A great museum. The study of Mt Usu was the beginning of volcanology. Its last eruption was only in 2000 (through to 2001!). What I thought were channels for snow melt run off are actually for mud/pyroclastic flow run off from the volcano. It can apparently erupt anywhere from anywhere around the mountain. Where it erupted in 2000/1 is about one kilometre from where we stayed!

From Lake Toya it was a straight run down to Hakodate. Terrible weather but that didn't stop the black (always black) people movers from flying along the expressway at 130+kph.

J had knocked herself out so missed the lovely (not) drive but woke up in time for the drive into Hakodate.

We decided on Goryokaku Tower Goryokaku Tower Official Website as the starting point of our visit to Hakodate. Bucketing down as we ran across to the entrance. Great view across all of Hakodate from the tower and down on to the star shaped citadel of Goryokaku. The pictures of it through the seasons are amazing. In cherry blossom season it is just beautiful. In the rain of just after cherry blossom season not so much.

After a coffee we decided for some reason to walk out into the park. Lunatics. Pouring rain. Howling wind. We of course got soaked. After a bit of a drive around town we decided we might as well see if we could check-in a bit early then return the car. Nearly filled up with diesel. Luckily the nozzle didn't fit in the filler. After some excellent sign language one of the staff gave me a hand, the tank was filled and order was returned to the world.

We worked out how to get to the back of the Smile Hotel *** SMILE HOTEL HAKODATE, HAKODATE *** where there was a space to back the car in out of the rain so that we could clean it out before dropping it off. Apparently the look on my face was priceless as we walked into the room. All I could see was two single beds but the room did have three and was one of the bigger rooms we stayed in. Car drop off was across the road behind the station and was a cinch. We showed them the receipt for the petrol (we'd been asked to keep them all) and that was it. Road trip over.

Hakodate has a bit of a craft beer scene so it was time to try it out. Unfortunately the walk to the beer hall was much further than we thought. Pouring rain and blowing a gale and our shoes, socks and feet were soaked. Then it wasn't even open!! There was another brewery supposedly another couple of blocks away. It was definitely a bit further than that but when we got to Hakodate Beer Hall Hakodate Beer Hall | Travel Hakodate it was warm and dry and the beer and food was good. A lot of people arriving after work and what we all thought was a surprising number of women coming in for beers and a snack. In Oz you'd see wine or spirits but it was all beer here.

Wisely we caught a cab back to the hotel and hung our wet clothes around the room to dry.

 

[Major]

Hope I'm not too late to tag along

 

[bPeteb]

Hope I'm not too late to tag along

Jump on board

 

[bPeteb]

We woke up and the rain was still falling. Very glad we only had about 100m to get under the covered walkway that led to the station. Most of our stuff had dried overnight and what wasn't was stuffed into plastic bags and packed. Breakfast felt a bit cafeteria but it was actually pretty good.

As a bed and a breakfast with convenient location The Smile was fine but the Four Points Sheraton across the road would have been much finer!

We couldn't actually get on the limited express from Hakodate to Shin-Hakodate but it hardly mattered. The local train only took about five minutes longer. It left earlier though and meant we needed to stand around on the cold and windy shinkansen platform for quite a bit longer.

As usual, the Hayabusa pulled out of the station right on time. At the second stop back on Honshu we didn't do the usual quick off and on. We just sat there, and sat there for a long time. Maybe 30 minutes. Maybe more. I could see the departure time up on the board outside the carriage and it had long since passed but didn't notice the time as we finally started moving again.

That train literally flew between stops. As it banked around turns you moved in your seat. Way faster than we'd travelled on the way up. A couple of other northern Shinkansen lines merge into the one trunk route to Tokyo and except at stations it's a single line in each direction. They need to have the slower trains sat in stations so that the express trains can pass through. By the time we arrived into Tokyo we'd only made up 10 minutes but in the scheme of things that was a mighty effort on such a congested line.

There was a wedding on in England that some people wanted to watch so we stopped at a gourmet supermarket in the station and stocked up on nibbles and craft beers before we went back to the embassy.

The bbq was fired up and we had burgers, beer and fancy cheese while a Pom and a Yank got married in a castle.

 

[bPeteb]

Northern Honshu flies by, our very beautiful Tokyo digs, a bbq to watch a wedding

 

[bPeteb]

Woke up to another beautiful Tokyo day.

We headed north to Asakasa in the hope that we might see at least a little bit of Japan's oldest matsuri - Sanja Matsuri Sanja Matsuri - Wikipedia. Al had looked at the times for it and thought we might be too early but we needn't have worried. We came up out of the subway into a sea of people.

Before I get to the matsuri I have to mention that straight across the river from Asakasa was Asahi's headquarters and the famous Phillipe Stark Beer Hall from 1989. I remember it from uni.

Back to Sanja Matsuri. It's a Shinto festival where groups of people carry three 'portable shrines' around the streets of Asakasa. They appear to be super heavy as people are swapped out as they move slowly round the streets. They chant and drum and it's all a whole lot of fun. We wandered around and saw each temple and also caught some tiny temples being pulled along by groups of tiny kids. Super cute.

 

[bPeteb]

Some more of the matsuri including the tiny temples, ice-cream!

 

[bPeteb]

Baseball at Tokyo Dome. Tokyo was thrashed!

 

[bPeteb]

A Lambo, a bizzare Nissan Micra, a Maybach in a public carpark, dinner at Jomon Roppongi including sake in a box

 

[HeavyElectricity]

Thanks for posting your updates here too! A great read - sorry to hear about your passport/license dramas (and having to watch the wedding!).

 

[Pug1]

Fantastic TR bigpetebrown. It brought back many happy memories of our Hokkaido tour in Feb 2017. We saw most of the winter festivals on Hokkaido plus the lovely Red Crowned Cranes and lots of snow and ice. Impressed with the Japanese roads, with good English signage and we bought most of our lunches at the spotlessly clean roadside service centres and convenience stores. Our tour was with Tours Gallery/Destination Management based in Brisbane and we drove around Hokkaido in a small coach with our party of 18. I lodged a post about our next trip in November 2018 to the lesser visited islands in central Japan as the operator needs a few more couples to make up the 16 and we want this tour to go ahead as Japan is one of our favourites. We also visited and loved the Toyota showroom in Tokyo/Odaiba. I'll try to do a report of our forthcoming trip to Shikoku, Kyushu, Shodoshima and Miyajima Islands, in November. my photography is not as good as yours!

 

[bPeteb]

Thanks pug. Your upcoming tour sounds great. If we didn't have China booked for September I'd be tempted. Love Japan. As well as visiting the Toyota showroom at Odaiba, we also went to Nagoya just to go to their factory at Toyota City when we first went to Japan seven years ago.

 

[bPeteb]

and so it continues...

Mondays and us, when we're travelling, are an interesting mix. More often than not they end up not going to plan and this Monday was no different.

We decided we'd visit a garden, one of Tokyo's most highly rated, and now that I'm looking on google Earth I wonder if we'd already been back in 2011. I'm sure if I'd seen that it was called Shinjuku Gyoen it would have sounded familiar but I don't remember that as what we were aiming for when we got off the train at Nagatacho Station.

Lots of police on the road and in the side streets with batons. There was nothing in the news that night so maybe it was an exercise.

We walked a LONG way and looking back I'm not sure why although more walking would be good for me, not less.

We walked along the edge of a long narrow 'lake' near Akasaka and then around the outside of the Akasaka Imperial property that includes the State Guest House, a building that would be more at home in France. Then past some of the old (gymnastics) and new Olympic (national stadium) buildings before we arrived at what we thought was an entrance to the garden. Nope, locked. So we headed for another entrance only to find the 'Closed Mondays' sign. Arghhhhhhhhhhh

We should have then headed for Meiji Jingu but I bet it would have been closed so back on the train to where we met our friends for lunch.

We then walked to Roppongi and through the beautiful Starlight Park to 21_21 Design Site 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT (en)

Brilliant building, fantastic photography-based exhibition in a beautiful park.

We stumbled across the beautiful Akasaka 'Grove of Life' Seicho-No-Ie. Next we visited the very quaint Nogi Park where General Nogi's house sits. Only opened once a year if I remember rightly. A lovely little garden with the Nogi Shrine next to it.

We then went in search of a coffee and despite Al's best intentions, his Google maps let us down. Each time there was supposed to be a coffee place, there wasn't. Oh, except Starbucks and even if it was the last place on earth selling coffee I wouldn't step through the door.

We did eventually find coffee, not far from the embassy.

A typical Al and Pete Monday abroad.