Kushiro - May 2018

Photo album

Thursday 17th May

It was quite rainy as we set off - good for driving. We took the slightly slower but shorter and toll-free back roads, stopping for breakfast and fuel at Shimizu, making the most of the hot options in the vending machines and enjoying the park next to the town hall. We'd managed to work out how to set up the car's GPS destination by phone number, but we were still cross referencing with Google Maps, which relied on the occasionally spotty internet... and all ending up with different results (sorry Mariko! Shimizu was a slight backtrack - Google Maps bypassed it by using some local road shortcuts - in fact this section of the drive involved quite a bit of zig-zagging). The road took us through hilly areas, through lots of small towns - often with their own local ski slopes, and farming areas with a backdrop of some quite impressive mountains. I noticed that many curves had a 'radius' indicator sign, 200 is a gentle curve, where a 30 is a tight turn. We even passed an emu and ostrich farm. Once we passed through Ashoro, the towns dropped away and the road was direct and very quiet apart from a steady flow of army vehicles that were probably heading to a base that we'd passed... unless there were some developments on the Korean peninsula that we'd missed!

Arriving at Lake Akan, we bought tickets for the next cruise, and while waiting we walked through town, past the large resort hotels and eco museum, and back along the shore. We climbed the steps to the shrine next to the eco museum, admiring the diligence with which some local workers were sanding the handrails. Their workmanship became a running joke at the expense of the many subsequent attractions whose handrails weren't quite so smooth. We boarded our cruise boat at the city jetty (after enjoying the 'relaxing toilet' in the pharmacy) and enjoyed a chilly trip around the lake with our fellow travellers, most of retirement age - a large proportion seemed to be sleeping on the way back. The commentary was in Japanese and neither of us really followed it, but it was nice to hear the big ballad version of the Marimo song, a tribute to the large cute spherical moss balls endemic to the lake. The cruise included a short stop at the Marimo exhibition centre - we felt it was slightly underwhelming but still an enjoyable trip.

We then had a walk around the lake shore, taking in the hot spring and bubbling mud pits and admiring the smoothly sanded handrails. Back in the car, we headed for Kushiro - past a very lengthy approach of homemaker centres and car dealerships. Our hotel was pretty classy and had nice Art Deco touches. We settled in and then headed across the river to explore the restaurant district. Mariko found us a really fun and yummy sushi restaurant with the staff shouting out call-and-response chants to people arriving, ordering etc. We were intrigued by the bananas they gave as we left, each inscribed with a cheery message. We could hear some taiko somewhere a couple of blocks away but we didn't worry about trying to track down the source.

Friday

Mariko felt an earthquake around 3am (magnitude 5.8, maybe 80km away) but I slept through. The morning was a lot brighter than the day before but it was still quite cold outside - a big contrast to our very toasty hotel room. We walked down towards the coast and walked a lap around Harutori Lake, which wasn't quite as picturesque as its name ("spring bird") suggested, and parts were quite industrial, but the museum buildings looked pretty impressive. We looped back around to the city centre and station area and enjoyed a delicious seafood lunch at Washo Market. All very nice but there were constant public service announcements being played over the city's PA systems, which gave it a very post-apocalyptic feel. There had also been a lullaby playing as pedestrian crossing music.

We picked up our car and with newfound confidence, set the GPS for the Kushiro City Crane Natural Park. It led us to a large and very full car park surrounded by low buildings; I felt something was slightly amiss as I'd remembered passing the Crane centre on the other side of the highway the day before, nonetheless we approached what was possibly the main entrance - but on peering inside there were a bunch of what looked like patients in wheelchairs - the complex seemed to be a rehabilitation centre. On cross-checking with Google we decided to drive to the adjoining acreage which was, indeed, the Crane park. It was great to see the cranes up close in their enclosures; these were birds that were recovering from injuries. We didn't manage to spot the baby cranes though. Note that it turned out that the centre we'd passed the day before was the International Crane Centre, a few kilometres further away - not sure if this would've been much of a different experience.

We then headed to the Marsh Observatory, again trusting the GPS, and again to our frustration - it directed us to a location that was basically over the back fence from where we were aiming - however it was about 10km driving to get there. We took the hilltop walk through the forest from the observatory, mostly over a fairly rickety boardwalk, and saw the fantastic vista of the huge marsh area spread out below. We then drove on a couple of kilometres further to the Onnenai Visitor Centre, and this proved to be a highlight - there are kilometres of boardwalks out into the marshes, and it was a really fantastic landscape; sort of desolate, but teeming with vitality. We were even able to spot a couple of wild cranes walking along, 100m or so from the track. There were a handful of other tourists around but the carparks were virtually empty and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Mariko dared me to put a Godzilla on the 'wildlife spotted' whiteboard map... and I took her up on it :-)

We had certainly given Mariko's fitness tracker a good workout! We headed back into town... this time our GPS sent us very obviously a km or so from our hotel, and it occurred to me that when I'd pressed the 'set destination' button, I'd probably set our destination to be the location of the button on the screen - I'm pretty sure this wasn't the cause of our problems earlier in the day, though! - I suspect the directory was out of kilter. After enjoying a complementary red wine from the hotel common room, and checking out the touristy shopping centre that was a prominent feature of the view from our room, we looked at the dining options. We decided to give "Porkers" a miss, instead having Italian for dinner. Then, back to our sauna-like hotel room; we fired up a device that looked like a humidifier, and pressed a few buttons until it started cooling the air a little.

Next time: it'd be interesting to see the Ainu Kotan at Lake Akan. But otherwise, a half-day at Akan worked pretty well - there are quite a few big resort hotels but I suspect these are mostly for the ski season. We really enjoyed our time in Kushiro; it would've been great to have some more definitive websites for the places we were interested in.