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.