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.