Daisetsuzan national park & Abashiri

So, or next stop was Daisetsuzan national park, slam bang in the middle of Hokkaido. But before arriving there, we stopped for lunch at a rather interesting restauarant in Biei - called Restaurant Asperge. The theme - French cuisine with a Japanese touch. We took the set menu, and had a great meal. I suppose the cuisine is best described as typical French ingredients cooked in a Japanese manner. Fusion the Japanese way, if you will. Normally we only go for Japanese restaurants in Japan, but we were happy to have made this one exception!

We arrived at Sounkyo Onsen, where we were staying, around late afternoon. It's a rather scenic place, surrounded by mountains (unfortunately the weather was very cloudy, which kind of spoilt the view for most of our stay). This time, we were staying at an Onsen hotel. In some ways it's a bit like a bigger version of a Ryoan, with similar Japanese-style rooms, set meals (not as classy as in a Ryokan), good onsen baths, and a less personalized service. A pretty classy establishment, all in all.

We spent the afternoon settling in at our room, trying out the onsen (excellent Onsen baths again, with outdoor pools with a nice view towards the mountains) and having a walk around the village (not much to, Sounkyo Onsen is more like a collection of hotels than a village as such). After our buffet dinner (which really impressed us!), we headed off to check out some nice fireworks just outside the hotel, which was pretty cool. And to top off a nice evening, bingo time! Yeah, not the sort of thing we would normally do, but hey, this is Japan, gotta try everything, right? I even won a bag of rice biscuits, yippee!

After a tasty buffer breakfast, we decided it was time to explore the national park a bit (it is, after all, the biggest national park in Hokkaido!). The thing to do if you are based in Sounkyo Onsen, for those not too ambitious, is to take the cable car up to Mount Kurodake, which is what we decided to do. (we thought it would be a nice and easy introduction to the area). Unfortunately, it was a bit of a wasted trip, as the weather was very cloudy up at the top, to such an extent that we saw none of the (apparently) gorgeous landscapes. Oh well...

The next thing to do in Sounkyo Onsen, for those not too ambitious, is to visit the Ginga & Ryusei waterfalls, that are an easy drive from the village. Thankfully, we were far down enough in the valley to able to actually see the two waterfalls. Well worth the trip!

We very still quite keen to do a bit of walking, so decided to sort of randomly drive around the natural park. We drove past Taisetsu lake, and up a rather dodgy dirt track, which took us to an Onsen. We could see a footpath indicated from there, so decided to head up that way. And a nice hike it was indeed, a quite steep climb took us up to a scenic plateau, with proper mountain scenery.


Thankfully, the clouds were sparse enough to allow us to actually behold the beautiful scenery, even if the sun kept well out of sight. All the signposts were in Japanese, so we didn't actually know where we were going, or even if we were doing a circular walk. So eventually we decided to walk back the way we came. No matter, All in all, we were very happy to finally have been able to do a bit of hiking!

We were rather nackered after our hike, so didn't do much else other than have dinner.

The next day, we decided to attempt the cable car up to Mount Kurodake again. This time, we were luckier with the weather - no sun this time either, but clear visibility. So we decided to take the ski lift up to the base of the summit. Conditions were a bit cloudier up there, but we still decided to hike up to the summit, as it was a relatively short, if steep, walk.

It was well worth the effort, even if the clouds prevented us from much enjoying the landscapes, the satisfaction of reaching the summit made the effort well worth it. Actually, the clouds parted for a couple of minutes, giving us a glimpse of the landscapes - we could only imagine how gorgeous the view would be with a clear, blue sky... ;-) Anyway, time enough to get a picture taken! And as an added bones, we spotted a deer on the way back on the ski lift! (apart from that, a few cute chipmunks also made an appearance before our hike)

That brought an end to our stay at Daisezusan national park. A stunningly beautiful place, it's just a pity we weren't luckier with the weather. And I really enjoyed the onsen, needless to say!

Our next stop was Abashiri, a small town on the Northern shores of Hokkaido, by the sea of Okhotsk. After checking in at our hotel, we headed off to explore town. Only to find that, hmm, there really isn't all that much to see in Abashiri. Apart from a few fishermen's boats in the harbour. There are a couple of interesting museums outside the town centre, apparently, but it was too late to visit those. So a bit of a disappointment, then. We did stop by to try the famous Okhotsk Blue Draft beer, that's brewed in Abashiri (there's a restaurant next to the brewery that serves it). 

It's all natural as well - apparently it comes from a combination of Gardenia, seaweed and melted iceberg water. 

Back at the hotel, we had a rather impressive set meal - made up for our somewhat disappointing town visit! I especially appreciated finally being able to try the giant crab Hokkaido is so famous for. It's not the best time of the year to have the crab, apparently, but it was still damn good.

We started the next day by heading off to Cape Notoro, a nice scenic spot about 10 kilometres from Abashiri. The views from the lighthouse (which is the focal point) are for sure pretty stunning. A pity the weather didn't show much signs of improving, I'm sure we'd have appreciated the place more on a sunny day.

In fact, as things got from bad to worse (it started raining), we decided today was perhaps a good day for visiting museums. So we headed off to the Abashiri prison museum. It's a kind of famous place, having featured in a number of Japanese movies, apparently. The Japanese equivalent of Alcatraz, if you will. It's a pretty cool place. 

There are plenty of exhibits describing the rather hard life the prisoners had here. (apparently the temperature got to nearly zero on some nights, as the heating provided wasn't quite up to standards for Hokkaido's climates). There's also an interesting exhibition about how the prisoners helped build one of the first roads across Hokkaido. Quite a project, one that cost a lot of lives... The museum really does a good job at describing the conditions of prisoners in the old days and today. We also decided to have lunch at the museum - they actually serve the same meal as prisoners get! (Mathilde had that - whereas I decided to upgrade from Mackerel to Salmon...).

Unfortunately, the weather showed no signs of improvements, so we decided to visit another museum before heading off - the Hokkaido Museum of Northern people. Another great museum - much better than the similar museum we visited in Hakodate. This museum tells the story of not only the local Ainou people, but also of other northern people - including the Finnish Sami. And it does so in a very informative and modern way, using a mixture of traditional  (with a nice collection of items used by the various people) and modern methods (like multimedia, video clips and so forth). Really interesting visit.

And then, time to carry on, direction Lake Akan.