Day 23 Japan
Today I leave the big city and head bush. Since Hokkaido is supposed to be the untouched wilderness of Japan I've decided to hire a car for a few days and check out the island. I've also decided I'm flying from Sapporo to Tokyo (1/4 the time and 1/3 the cost of the train) so I'm picking the car up from and returning it to the airport.
Because of the way they calculate hire periods here I'm not picking it up til noon (costs an extra day if I pick up before noon) so I have a nice relaxing morning and try to plan out what I'm going to tackle in Hokkaido. Planning road trips is always a challenge when you've never driven there before as you really have no idea how long anything is going to take. The timings on google maps must be taken with a giant grain of salt. I've found you need to add at least 20% to any amount of time google maps tells you.
I love road trips. I really enjoy driving a car through places. Not necessarily stopping a lot but just enjoying the scenery and spending time on the road. Passing through an area just really appeals to me.
When I finally got to the hire place I ended up with an 8 seater van instead of the mid sized car I requested because they didn't have any. It's a 2017 model with AUTO DRIVE but I'm not allowed to use it because they only have an instructional video in Japanese :(
It drives pretty well and it's kind of nice to be in a big elevated vehicle after having the Ford Mondeo Sedan for 5 years. It also gives me the option of sleeping in the car if I want it because the back seats fold down into a bed-like capacity. I'm not sure I'll use it but options are always good.
So my general plan is to go all the way to the eastern tip of Hokkaido and back in the 3 nights I have the car. I really only have 2 full days of the car plus a half day today and a couple of hours in the morning on Sunday before my flight.
Today I have a rough plan to end up in Furano for the night. It's a couple of hours drive from Sapporo so that gives me time to get there and do a little sightseeing before I feel like checking in. Flowers are a big thing in the Furano area so I decide to hit couple of flower farms that are supposed to be pretty spectacular on the way.
The first one was a big lavender farm but all the lavender has been picked or stopped flowering by the time I get there. There's a small garden at the top still intact but most of the fields are fallow. The next one I try is called Farm Tomita and this one still has heaps of flowers in the fields. Not just lavender ... they have a heap of different flowers in different colours all planted to make big rainbow-ish fields. Unfortunately it's bucketing down rain so I only walked in long enough to have a quick look and take a couple of photos before retreating to the car. I did find time to buy a lavender ice cream though which was fairly subtle in flavour and not as sweet as I was expecting.
It was raining heavily enough that I didn't want to go traipsing around in the bush looking at the other stuff I had planned that night so instead I looked for a hotel in the area. I ended up at a town called Asahikawa instead of Furano because it was closer to the highway.
I stayed at a very old style Ryokan or Japanese private hotel. It turned out to be this old couple's house in the city that they'd turned into a guesthouse. I got 2 rooms (sitting room and bedroom) and a car park. It was a pretty old building and a bit dodgy to be honest but the place was clean and the futon was comfortable so I didn't have too much to complain about. The old couple were very nice and I'm sure they thought they were providing a really good service. Certainly not worth the money I paid for it though. I've stayed in much better hostels for a quarter of the price.
The rain had largely stopped by the time I went out for dinner around 9pm so I had ate then had a walk around town. Small city with lots of artwork and a few parks and fountains. It seemed like they were having the same autumn festival thing that Sapporo was having because there were tents (all shut - too late obviously) all around the city.
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