Aug 2006

As usual at this hostel, we got up around 07:00, had an onsen ate breakfast and hit the road again. We left while blasting our 'first song of the day' song, "Life is a Highway"; we figured we needed a good Canadian road karma at the start of the day.

This day our plan was to head into Furano, a town that was about 1.5 hours away.

Furano is famous for its fields of lavender. We stopped at a couple really nice spots for Court to take some flower shots; I slept in the car while she was gone!

At one of the photo spots we stopped at there was a frame and a ledge set up for the best possible shot. You put your camera on the shelf and take a shot through the frame and bam! a postcard worthy shot. This is a very typical Japanese way to do things; it's very efficient. You walk on up put the camera down and you don't have to think about your picture at all.

Once we got into Furano we decided to head to the cheese factory. This was the only reason Courtney wanted to go here. We wandered on up and found that you could go in and make cheese. So that was how we spent our morning, making cheese.

We were the only non-Japanese people there and the staff was very worried that we were going to burn or ruin our cheese somehow. We were set up around a square counter with four other cheese-making stations. There was a family, with two boys, standing next too us. The youngest boy was too young to make the cheese but he decided he was going to be my best friend. He was always watching me to see what I was doing and went up and watched Courtney as she made her label. He kept trying to ask me things in Japanese, but I couldn't answer them at all. He was cute and came outside the cheese room to wave to us as we left.

Once we made the cheese we bought some other cheese, milk and crackers, and some loaclly made grape juice and had a little picnic outside.

Near the cheese factory there was a ice milk factory. After lunch we went to check that out and maybe get some ice milk. But, the flavours they had there were things like Green Tea and Sweet Bean Paste. We saw this and decided we would pass on this.

Once we left this parking lot we just headed off, we weren't sure where we were going. While I was driving Court found an ad for some guy that lets you make your pottery. We figured this we be a cool way to spend the afternoon and went on the hunt. We put the phone number for one place into our GPS and continued on our way.

The only problem was when we got to where the GPS said we should go there was no pottery place there. We drove around the block some more, but there was nothing. Unfazed, we moved to plan B: find a different spot to make pottery.

The only problem with this other spot was the GPS didn't even recognize the phone. On our way to the second spot we were on some roads that weren't on the GPS map. However, with some creative map reading and spacial reasoning on my part we found where we wanted to be.

We walked into his studio and the man there was surprised to see us. I don't think he gets too many westerners in his shop (it was in the middle of nowhere). I also think he was even more surprised when we said we wanted to make pottery. Well, we didn't actually say that. He couldn't speak English and we can't speak Japanese, but we managed to get this across.

We went out back and watched him knead the clay a bit, then whip off a bowl a mug and something else all within 5 minutes. Then it was our turn. Court went first and made a bowl and I went second and made a mug. The Japanese man basically watched over us and getting telling us, "Chotto. Slower.", which means "A little. Slower."

I must say he made this look extremely easy when he made his pottery, but it was hard. It was really hard. It was a good thing that he was there to fix any mistakes we made or to tell us to go slower. This was a fun way to spend the afternoon. We left our masterpieces with him because he had to fire them in his kiln and he is going to send them to us next month. It will be nice to get another souvenir of Hokkaido a month after we get back.

After this we made our way back to the hostel (it was around this point where we decided that cheese and cheese and crackers does not a stomach-settling lunch make ~C). At dinner, we were sitting next to another couple who turned out to be from Waterloo. He was a professor of physics who had a conference in Osaka. He was on sabbatical and they were living in New Zealand for a year. We had a nice chat with them at supper and breakfast the next morning. After this it was time for some cards, an onsen and sleep.
~A

We woke up the next morning and were able to take a bath and a shower. Most of the other places we stayed at the showers were only open from 16:00 until 21:00 or 22:00. This was a really nice change of pace. We had another Japanese breakfast, and headed out on our way. We decided we had enjoyed enough being out in nature and decided to head to some rural Japanese towns.

We left and headed towards Biei which is about 30 minutes from our hostel. We made our first stop the information center. Actually, that was our second stop. The first was for ice cream. We got there and found a computer we could use to check our email and got an English map of the area.

On this map that we got there was a list of "taxi" tours. You could hire a taxi and he would drive you along 3 or 4 different scenic routes so you could take pictures at various spots. It's VERY Japanese. It also gave the price for the whole trip. We were sitting in the car deciding what we should do when Court said, "Hey, screw this. Let's drive this route ourselves!" (actually, I don't think it was like that, but this was a little more dramatic), which is what we did. We set off with the map and the list of good picture sites.

Biei is famous for its flowers. In the summer they plant flowers so that a different one in a different colour will bloom in the same field every month. We were there after the prime season, but it all still looked really beautiful.

These are a few flower fields we stopped at on our tour.

We found this other field in our travels. We were talking to the Japanese staff at the hostel and they were saying that these flowers are very expensive and no wants to pay to seed a whole field. Basically she said that it is very special and rare to see any of these flowers in the wild. This made our trip.

After we hit up these flower fields we headed towards this farm that supposedly has amazing steaks (which after eating there, we'd say it is true). At this farm they had a lot of different animals in pens outside. We went down and took a look at a few of the different animals, but we stopped when we started to realize these were all animals that we have at home. But, we got some nice pictures anyways.

We went into the restaurant and basically said to the waitress steak, but then she handed us the menu and we realized that you could get $20 steaks or $60 steaks. We settled on the $20 steak. The only problem was it didn't come with potatos, just rice. Well, and a few vegetables, but the carrots tasted weird. They were still good though.

After we left the steakhouse we continued on our travels. Our next stop if we could find it was to head to the Asahiyama Zoo in Asahikawa. One of Courtney's students said that it was the best zoo in Japan. We got some nice pictures from our visit, but we came to two conclusions, one before entering and one after leaving. The conclusion before we went in was that we were going to stand back from the monkeys. The conclusion we came to after we left was, if this is the best zoo in Japan, we do not want to go to another zoo until we are back in Canada. Anyways, here are some good shots.

We also saw this picture above the bathroom. We assumed it meant that you could take your kids in there, but we're not quite sure. That or Kangaroos pee standing up.

After the zoo we headed back up into the mountains to our hostel. Once we got there we had supper and relaxed. We met a girl from Finland who was on a language exchange to Japan. She gave us same great tips for travelling around Europe.

After this we both took another onsen and went to sleep. The great thing about this hostel is the onsen was outdoors. Here's a nice shot of it.

~A