Day 9: Visiting an Ice Village

 Wow! It's Day 9 of our tour already!

Our breakfast was at the Hotel Nikko Northland Obihiro and we enjoyed ikura (salmon eggs) again knowing that it would be one of our last days to enjoy this delicacy.

We were advised to dress warmly and to use ice cleats if we had them because we would be going to "Ice Village" on top of Lake Shikaribetsu which was completely frozen over. 

Hokkaido Official Tourism Site: 

The setting of the village is Lake Shikaribetsu, also known as “Lake in the Sky". Located about 80 minutes by car from Obihiro City, it is the highest natural lake in Hokkaido.

We were taken to an Ice Bar to have a drink from an ice glass. Yup. The glass was made of ice. We bought an umeshu.

I got this from AI: 

Umeshu is a traditional Japanese liqueur made by steeping unripe ume (Japanese plums, which are related to apricots) in alcohol (like shochu) and sugar, resulting in a sweet, tangy, and fruity drink with notes of almond and marzipan from the pit. It's often called "plum wine," but it's technically a liqueur, not wine, and is enjoyed chilled, on the rocks, mixed with soda, or in cocktails.

I was worried our lips would stick to the ice cup, but it was OK and the umeshu was very good. It might have warmed us up a bit.

Now that we were warmed up, we went about exploring the ice village. Calling it a village was a bit of a stretch, but we were surprised to see that there was even an outdoor onsen.

We went out farther onto the lake and saw some school children being taught how to build an igloo. 

And yes, we did decide to do something crazy like throwing some snow into the air.

Once that was done, we enjoyed this wonderful sukiyaki lunch at the Tokachitei restaurant. We dipped our cooked meat and veggies in raw eggs. Yes, it's perfectly safe here to do that. And it was delicious.

We went to a store selling a lot of dried seafood. We also bought peppermint sprays for our kids and us. We were told it was good for spraying into your shoes to keep it minty fresh. You could spray your mouth to make it minty fresh too. And you could even spray a fan on a hot day and sniff the peppermint scent as you fan yourself.

One of the amazing things about our bus tour guide, Yumiko was her ability to serve hot coffee and tea to everybody on a moving bus. 

She also had a beautiful singing voice and entertained us with songs about Hokkaido and other popular songs during the long rides. 

Returning to Sapporo, we saw that a blizzard was buffeting the city.

Dinner was at a izakaya. An izakaya is a casual pub-style restaurant meant for socializing with drinks and small shareable plates. In those few short days of the tour we felt like we were now all good friends.

I must say, this last hotel was the fanciest and prettiest of all. It was wonderful to be able to stay there for a couple of nights before our return home.

And we had just one more day of the tour left before our flights home. 

Day 8: Red Headed Cranes

Wow! Day #8 sure came quickly. It was now Sunday, February 15th. 

Here was one thing that stymied me for much too long. I have the toilet lid down in this photo, but with the lid up, I could NOT figure out HOW to flush the toilet! I hunted all over looking for the flush handle. 

Sheesh! 

Would you believe you have to press down on that flush thingamajig? Sigh...

OK... But that's not all. Then to wash your hands...

I kept trying to turn on the water with the cold knob, but nothing would happen. Art is a retired engineer. He explained that the hot and cold knobs only controlled the temperature. The knob in the middle indicated whether the water would be directed to the faucet or the shower. Sigh.... OK.... Took me a few times to finally get it in my brain.

And then breakfast. After all that toilet excitement, I needed a peaceful breakfast.

Yikes! So many choices. So many people!  And where is the coffee to wake me up?

Sigh...

Kay took me to the coffee machine and showed me how to use it.

Kuni, our tour escort in Japan warned that he called this "Food Wars" because there were 10 tour groups staying at this hotel.

Our first stop for today would be the International Crane Center.

O

Tsuru or Tancho are the Japanese names for the red-headed cranes. We learned that the cranes almost became extinct and are now protected. Apparently, the people in the area noticed their decline in population 150 years ago and worked to protect them by providing food.

Male and female cranes mate for life. And both partners will tend to the eggs and then to the chicks that hatch from them. Our tour guide, Yumiko explained that the crane motif is thus often used in wedding items. 

We enjoyed looking at so many of these beautiful birds.

This is from Wikipedia:

This species is among the largest and heaviest cranes, typically measuring about 150 to 158 cm (4 ft 11 in to 5 ft 2 in) tall and 101.2–150 cm (3 ft 4 in – 4 ft 11 in) in length (from bill to tail tip). Across the large wingspan, the red-crowned crane measures 220–250 cm (7 ft 3 in – 8 ft 2 in).

Yes, they were huge.

I found this photo among the many, many we took.

It looks weird, but the crane is merely stretching his neck to clean under its wing.

I got confused seeing the second crane behind it.

 

Inside the International Crane Center, we saw a lot of crane origami and artifacts. I had to take a photo of that circle artwork created with hundreds (maybe thousands) of teeny tiny origami cranes.

Our next stop was the Kushiro Fisherman's Wharf.

Kay and Dareld had been looking forward to buying a King Crab and having it prepared for you.

We joined them in this quest.

Dareld and Kay are the culinary experts so they chose the crab.

This fellow then took out the crab and cooked it.

He brought it to our table to show us the crab before he cut it up to make it easier to eat.

He even gave us scallop skirts for hors d'oeuvres to munch on while we waited for the crab to cook. 

It was all great fun!

Our next stop was to see jewelry ice.

This from a Japan Travel website:

Each winter, part of Hokkaido's coast is covered in a natural phenomenon colloquially called "jewelry ice," in which a beach is covered in smooth blocks of ice shining like diamonds in the sun. Jewelry ice is created when ice floes from the Tokachi River break apart at the river's mouth and wash up onto the beach. The sand polishes each block to a gem-like shine.

It was a fun experience but there weren't a lot of jewelry ice available. Still... it was interesting to see this natural phenomenon.

This is what it was supposed to look like if there had been more Jewelry ice strewn on the beach.

After taking photos of all the jewelry ice, we got back on the bus and headed to our hotel for the night. We all got to taste a little sake or wine before our dinner.

There was a train station with a lot of stores next door to the hotel and yes, we were able to get everything our kids suggested that they would like.

We had a wonderful dinner at the hotel and then our guides all performed for us.

Our Hawaii tour escort, Micah is part of a Hawaiian entertainment family so he even knew my nephew who performs in Hawaii and the mainland.

Micah sang and played the ukulele while Kuni danced a hula. Tiger did a rousing song for his baseball team.

This was such a fun day and we would now be on our way back to Sapporo.

50501 Fun

I don't usually post on Sundays. However, one of my dear teacher buddies from Illinois just texted this photo to me and I really can't help but to post it. The Trump protests have brought out such creativity in people that it's absolutely amazing and so much fun!

Have a happy week everybody. 

Day 7: Swan Lake and Ice Fishing

It was now Saturday, February 14th. We'd bought extra handwarmers for the next couple of days. It was startling to realize our trip was more than half over.

Breakfast was at 6:30 again. Yes, that buffet dinner the night before was wonderful and so was the breakfast. We were enjoying having salad with our breakfast every morning. There was a lovely wintry scene outside the window of the restaurant. Large suitcases were being packed to move to the hotel we'd be at in two days. Our small blue bags would be coming with us.

Here's our hotel.

Goodness! It was Valentine's Day!

The guides all gave us a lot of fun Valentine snacks to have on our journey.

Actually...

Valentine's Day (February 14th) in Japan is for women to give chocolates to men to express affection or obligation, reversing Western traditions.

However, White Day is celebrated on March 14th. That's when men give reciprocal gifts to women who gave  them Valentine's gifts the month before. I think the guys give treats like white chocolates or cookies, etc.

No thank you.  I prefer dark chocolate, please.

We were arriving at Lake Kussharo to see the Whooper swans.

There's a hot spring below so it was really fun to stick your hand in the very warm water. That must be why the swans were loving it here at the caldera lake.

I've never seen so many swans flocking together. They were so beautiful and graceful.

Art enjoyed feeling the warm hot spring water too.

We had this delicious hot pot lunch here cooking our seafood and vegetables in this wonderful soup broth. 

And yes, there was a gift shop there where we could do MORE omiyage (gift) shopping. No we didn't overdo purchases this time. We learned our lesson during our trip last year. 😏

After lunch, we were driven to Lake Masshu. It was breathtakingly beautiful. I could not stop taking photos of this incredible place.

Ainu are the indigenous people of Hokkaido.

When we arrived at the New Akan Hotel, we were told we could try ice fishing. The hotel was right next to Lake Akan which was completely frozen over. 

You could do it the easy way and go into a big tent and snag a lot of smelt that were planted there.

Or you could do it the hard way and bait hooks yourself and wait until a smelt decides to try it. Guess what Art, Kay and Dareld decided to do.

Yup. We had to bait the 3 hooks with super, teeny tiny worms and drop it into the hole. I didn't even realize the little bobbing float meant some fish had tried to take my bait.

Here's Art with his big catch. He then worked on adding one of those little pink worms to his hook and guess what. He baited his finger. Yup. The hook was imbedded in his finger. 😲

Would you believe he caught a couple of fish after that? It must have been the taste of blood on the hook. 

After about an hour, the four of us combined were able to catch a total of about 7 fish. We had coupons where we could have had our smelt cooked for us tempura style. Uuummm.... we donated it to the workers.

We were hungry after all that work and had a huge buffet meal. And yes, I indulged in desserts as well. I just COULDN'T pass it up. The endless variety was too much of a temptation.

We were told that there would be a fireworks display on the frozen lake. Kay and Dareld ventured out into the cold to get their photo. Did I mention that they are OVER a decade younger than us?  We took our fireworks photo from our window and went to bed.

I was looking forward to seeing the tancho (Japanese Red-headed Cranes) on the morrow. I did have a good night's sleep at last.

Day 6: Ice Floes and an Icebreaker Boat

It was Friday and the itinerary showed that we were going to Abashiri to board an icebreaker boat. 

We began the morning with an endless variety of Hokkaido delicacies for our breakfast. It wouldn't be easy to go back to my usual overnight oats.

And yes, we especially enjoyed having an endless supply of ikura which are salmon eggs and very, very expensive in Hawaii.

   

We'd traveled many, many miles since leaving Chitose on February 7th and arriving at Lake Saroma the day before.

We went to the Okhotsk Drift Ice Museum and got to do a fun experiment. We were handed a wet towel as we entered a refrigerated room. We then twirled our towels in the freezing air to see it frozen in seconds.

I'll have to tell my granddaughter to try this when they are hit with subzero weather in Chicago.

I know it's crazy but we had to try that caramel soft serve that was sprinkled with little salt crystals. Dareld and Art even finished their cones while looking out at the ocean from the observation deck.

And then we had a very fancy lunch with the entire tour group.

I may have lost most of my sense of taste, but this really was wonderful and I got enough of a flavor to know it was all to be savored.

After being warmed up by the wonderful luncheon, we arrived at Abashiri and boarded the icebreaker boat.

We were all seated inside the boat watching as the icebreaker boat cut its way through the ice floes (sheets of floating ice).

Eventually, we decided to all go outside onto the deck to see the action.

The stern or back of the boat showed the trail we'd made through the ice floe.

Once our boat docked, we were back on the bus heading to the Shiretoko Peninsula which is one of UNESCO's World Natural Heritage sites.

Here we stopped at the Oshin-Koshin Waterfall which is supposed to be in the group of 100 most beautiful waterfalls in Japan. 

OK... It was nice, but looked pretty frozen. We walked up to look at it and then did the penguin walk coming down. That's me with the white down coat being careful not to slip. 

We boarded the bus and headed to Shiretoko Daiichi Hotel. 

And yes, we had to pack for another two nights in those blue bags.

Actually, we also had a carryon that we brought along so we did have lots of storage capacity.

It's just the sorting and planning what to bring that makes my head spin. 

Most people have no problem with it. Sigh...

I think it's really cool that they have a separate toilet and bath area. And yes, there are those toilet slippers again. 

The bath area is interesting because you are to wash yourself outside the tub and then soak in the bathtub.

And yes, we had all the seafood dishes we could ever want for dinner. We were told that this hotel was supposed to have the Best Buffet in Hokkaido. 

It was another wonderful day and we were looking forward to visiting a lake of swans on the following day. Art loved the adventure of seeing all the different places and learning about them. I did too, but I also loved meeting other people and exchanging travel adventures together. 

Throughout the trip, Kay was mindful of my not getting lost, or knowing how the coffee machine works, where the drinks were, etc. Art also noticed that she was just like our daughter, Tiffany in the way she sort of watched over me. When I mentioned this to Tif, she laughed and said that's because I tend to always have a bewildered look. 😳