Day 25 Japan
This was not a good idea. The girl at the hostel recommended getting to the observatory by 4.20am to get up the top and catch the sunrise. So I set my alarm for 3.45am and hardened up on my 3.5 hours sleep and drove up to the observatory.
The Indian guy from the hostel was supposed to be coming but I waited 10 minutes past our agreed meeting time and he didn't show so I went on my own.
I'm extremely glad I didn't sleep in the car. It was damned cold. I had my sleeping bag so would have been fine but that's not really the point.
I saw a few deer and foxes on the way to the observatory but no roadkill so they are either much smarter than kangaroos or the Japanese are much better at cleaning up. I suspect it's a bit of both.
There were a heap of cars at the observatory but hardly anyone at the lookout at the top which was surprising. When I walked down later I saw a bunch of people at the lower level one so maybe they didn't see the steps to the top in the clouds. I missed it the first time then walked back for a second look.
Anyway. I was 4th up there ... some local photographers beat me there. And a couple of the staff from the hostel turned up as well. The English speaking girl had only been working there a few days (lives in Tokyo) and hadn't seen it yet so she was there and an older guy. And an Australian photographer who has been living in Japan for the last 10 years rocked up also.
Unfortunately for the latecomers the best of the scenery was over by the time they turned up. When I first got there it will still pretty dark and there was heavy cloud everywhere. About 4.30 or so the cloud disappeared from the lookout and you could see the top of them sitting there with some mountains occasionally poking through. Eventually a little bit of light appeared and gave a bit of colour to the horizon.
It was only like this for maybe 5 or 10 minutes then the cloud came back in full force and the sky turned into pea soup. It would periodically clear a bit over the next hour or so but the highlight was over. Hung around for a while longer to see if anything interesting would happen but it didn't so I took off back to the hostel.
It was a nice experience and I'm glad I went. I wish I had gone to bed a couple of hours earlier though :)
The smell of sulphur outside the hostel was really strong this morning. The whole region is covered in hot springs and it was very pungent today.
I paid for a Japanese breakfast at the hostel so I went back, showered then waited for breakfast. I had another chat with the English speaking girl (I'm so bad - I've forgotten her name now :( ) while breakfast was being prepared then she had to help and I got to eat shortly after. It was a good breakfast. Some rice, grilled fish, marinated tofu, pickled vegetables, an omelette and some miso soup. BIG MEAL and it was really tasty. Although if you take the rice out it wouldn't have been so filling. I'm glad there was no natto as I'd read this was a Japanese breakfast food and I didn't like my last experience with it.
I participated in another photo shoot with the hostel girls. I'm going to be all over Facebook on Japanese hostel pages by the time this trip is over.
First stop today was Lake Akan which is supposed to be a nice scenic lake. It's also one of the few places in the world that grows these green balls of algae called Marimo. Apparently they are in Australia as well but I'd never heard of them. I was hoping the local museum would have some good information about them but it was pretty crap. The museum was more about the ecology of the whole lake not really the Marimo. There wasn't very much there and it was all in Japanese. They did have some Marimo in a tank though which was pretty cool. They didn't do anything but sit there though. Stupid algae.
Next stop was Daisetsuzan National Park. There's a beautiful gorge here called Sounkyo Gorge that I drove through the previous day and I was determined to stop and take a look on the way back. Aussie photographer recommended it as well because the trees in the area are all starting to change colours which I wanted to see. It's not something I've seen a lot of in Australia.
So I got there (eventually) and jumped on a couple of ski lifts to get up quite high on Mount Kurodake. Expensive ski lifts but the view was wonderful and the colours on the trees were absolutely beautiful. In a couple of weeks it'll be completely different. The second ski lift takes you most of the way up the mountain and it's about a 90 minute hike to the summit. A lot of Japanese were doing it but I couldn't be arsed and I still wanted to see a couple of things that afternoon. There was however a smaller climb (about 20 minutes each way) that gave a view point over the other side of the mountain to a waterfall. The indigenous people of this area gave it a name that's something to do with a dragon because the fall looks kind of like a dragon's head.
After wandering around for a while I got the ski lifts down. The lift attendant seemed determined to see how many people he could squeeze into the gondola. My only real thought was that if we plummeted to our deaths at least my body parts would be easy to tell from everyone else's because of my size and skin colour!
There's a lot of hotels in the gorge and I wish I'd given myself a day in the area to chill out and look around. If I ever come back this way I'll definitely do that. I reckon you could easily entertain yourself for a few days with the river and the mountains in the area. In winter it's supposed to be a great ski area that's open for nearly 6 months.
I'm staying in a town called Furano tonight and there are a bunch of things I wanted to see between the gorge and there.
But. I was really starting to crash from the early start and traffic was starting to get really bad. It's a long weekend this weekend in Japan so there were plenty of people on the road and it was just a crawl. It's really developed in this central part of Hokkaido as well which means lots of people, lots of traffic lights and lots of slow speed limits. By the time I was about an hour from Furano I was starting to feel really drowsy at the wheel so I just went straight to the hotel and decided to call my Hokkaido sightseeing a day.
In hindsight I was far too adventurous with the amount of ground I wanted to cover in the time I had. Despite that I really enjoyed having a car for a couple of days and having control of my own schedule so I won't call it a waste.
Tonight's accommodation is a wooden lodge hostel in the woods just outside of town. I wasn't too confident it was going to be good but reviews were OK and given the long weekend there weren't a lot of options around for a price I was willing to pay. It was extremely basic but it had character I guess you could say. Honestly a lot of these guest houses feel like a way for someone to make some money out of their shitty house.
But this place had laundry facilities and I got a double bed with an inner spring mattress in a private room for a very cheap price. The room was basically a chipboard box that echoed with the sound of the Japanese, Taiwanese and Chinese tourists staying in the dorm rooms around me. I crashed like a log though and slept through the night so it didn't really matter what the room was like in the end.
This trip is certainly adjusting my standards of what is and is not acceptable accommodation.
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