Snow is Cold

You are gone.
I’m so all alone.
Here’s what’s left of my happy home.

“She’ll be back”,
That’s what i said,
As i stare at the ceiling.

‘Cause i need you baby.
Oh, how i miss you baby.
‘Cause i need you baby.
Oh, how i miss you baby.

[RJD2, Hidden Track (from the album Deadringer)]

From Muroran, Noboribetsu is an easy day trip, which is just as well as I didn’t fancy moving everything again so soon.
Noboribetsu is a great place - steaming pools of bubbling ooze and muck abound, the landscape looks martian at times with scorched earth and bizarre rock formations, they have a mini-geyser and one can even bathe their feet next to some small yet picturesque waterfalls in a naturally hot stream. Very pleasant. I buried my feet in the river bed, but the earth underneath was very hot indeed.

I was lucky to be there when I was according to one of the park guides as come May it’s swarming with people. I was, however, disappointed that I was there before the sakura (cherry blossom) arrived, as the valley is filled with 10,000 cherry trees. It would be a spectacular sight, even alongside the fugly concrete blocks which pass as hotels.

Unfortunately I had neglected to bring a hat or suntan lotion as the weather in Muroran had been cold and foggy, but Noboribetsu was seemingly above that in beautiful sunshine. The trail, whilst forested at times, was quite exposed at others, and I developed a headache and mild paranoia about sunburn. Luckily I escaped pretty much unscathed, although the headache persisted until I went to sleep. It would also have been helpful to have sunglasses, but I destroyed them in a particularly spectacular snowboarding crash when I was still landing on my face whenever I tried a 360.

Noboribetsu is also apparently the biggest onsen town in Japan. The particular onsen I visited has twenty different kinds of bath inside, which I thought was a bit over the top, but the scale of the place was certainly impressive. Sadly the atmosphere of tranquility was ruined somewhat by construction works going on inside the onsen. Yes, construction workers crashing and banging and walking amongst the naked folk. No discount offered. I at least paddled in all of the baths except the bubble bath, because it was a bubble bath, which is a bit gay really.

Dinner was a rip off in a crappy yakitori restaurant in Higashi-Muroran. Serves me right for diving into the first place I saw after deciding it was cold. No value in spontaneity eh. The town was, incidentally, still covered with freezing fog, which necessitated a warm jacket even though it had been sweltering in Noboribetsu. At least I felt less irate at having carried it around all day.

Muroran is a town of around 110,000 people situated on a mini-peninsula about 2.5 hours South of Sapporo. I was attracted to the hostel there because the description said it was almost literally at the top of a cliff, and was only 10 minutes from the beach. What it didn’t mention (well actually it did, but I somehow managed to overlook that part of the description) was the fact that it’s around a twenty minute walk from the train station, up a steep hill, and rather difficult to find (a much politer way of phrasing my thoughts from the actual time). Again, I arrived early, but there was an internet connection in the lobby (albeit on a PC from the early 90s), so I amused myself with that for an hour until I heard sounds emerging from within the administrative hideaway. The hostel owner seemed slightly odd, but what can you expect from someone living alone atop a cliff? The hostel itself was quite dilapidated and the building resembled a weird boat/spaceship combo, though while the public facilities were crumbling, the rooms were nice.

After checking in, I went for a wander along the coastal path which, being fairly mountainous, was pretty hard work. But totally worth it - there were some stunning views along the coast, and it actually looked unspoiled. The shoreline did look quite inaccessible though, with almost sheer drops in places - the path followed the line of the bluff. I’ll try to upload photos soon. Looking back in the opposite direction, there was a line of factories belching out smoke, in complete contrast with the natural beauty. The city is very elongated too, as it nestles between the sea and mountains. I imagined somewhere like Rio de Janeiro must be vaguely similar.

Having taken in the views for a while, I set off down the hill to the station, where there was a fairly lengthy wait for the next train to the end of the line - Muroran proper. I debated walking to the next stop, but the walk looked entirely uninteresting, and given how long it took the previous day, I decided it was probably best just to wait for the next train. Looking around “town” didn’t take long, and again there were visible signs of decay - faded signs and peeling paint. There didn’t seem to be much going on to be honest, but I walked to the sea front and admired the setting sun behind the beachhead.

I met a Niseko acquaintance for dinner in Higashi-Muroran (East Muroran), which seems to be the modern centre of the city. Her and her friend were 45mins late, but it was nice to eat with people rather than alone (previous night in Ikeda notwithstanding), and as she had a car I was spared the walk back up the hill, making it home in time for curfew(!) at 10pm. I hate curfews and generally avoid them like a certain Asian nation avoids accession of human rights, but in a place like this I supposed it was okay given that there wasn’t much reason to be out later than ten anyway…

Mashu lake was still frozen, but the view of the lake and mountains in the opposite direction were great from the lookout point. It would have been nice to visit the other lookout points, but the road was still closed for winter, and previously-mentioned restrictions on my ride meant that I took the easy option and decided to get a lift to the station rather than have to walk/hitchhike with my stupidly heavy bag.

My driver and I worked out (or rather he told me) that I could go to nearby Kawayu-onsen and check out a volcano and maybe a hot spring over there before heading down to Kushiro. It sounded like a good plan, so off I went, but not before using the free internet service in Mashu station for a while - a surprising and welcome find.

My lonely planet guide stated that one could walk a picturesque 4km path from the station to the town, which passed by the volcano on the way. I envisaged putting my bag in a locker at the station and heading out on foot, but the station turned out to be an unmanned shack without even as much as a ticket office (well, there was one, but it was very closed). Fearing a repeat of Rishiri, I asked the driver of the only bus outside the station if he was going to town. He was, so I hopped on, figuring I could leave my bags somewhere in town and walk out and back.

My bag was too big to fit in the lockers at the bus station, so I left it in the dutiful care of the bus station staff (in the middle of the floor in the waiting room) and set out. I hiked along the road out of town, figuring that it was the quickest and easiest way. The wind was biting, but it was clear and sunny so just on the right side of tolerably cold. The air in the whole town smelled of sulphur, which was belching out of vents from the local volcano - Iou-zan. I took a couple of pictures from the road and spotted a path which appeared to lead closer. I walked a little way along it, and my shoes were soon covered in sludgy pyroclastic mud. Yum. A little further along and the path disappeared underwater where snow was melting onto waterlogged ground. Not fancying a swim, I turned back and thought I would follow the path into the village. There was an amount of snow covering this route too, but it looked passable. Unfortunately, the surface was also sitting on top of a miniature lake which wasn’t immediately visible, and I got a shoe full of freezing water, so I carefully retraced my steps over the mud and walked back along the road.

I stopped by a foot onsen on my route through the town, which was free for use by any passers-by, and bought fried rice for lunch at the only restaurant which looked open. It was ok, but not a patch on the previous day’s version in Wakkanai. They must do something to the food there..

The scenery South of Akan was similar to the plains North of Akan, but this gave way to marshland - Kushiro Shitsugen National Park is the largest wetlands in Japan (perhaps because they concreted over their other large wetlands). The tourism website harped on about the wetlands a lot, but I figured I’d probably seen enough from the train (which again was a pleasant journey from a scenery point of view).

On arrival I realised I’d sent the wrong email to my phone and hence had no idea what the name of my hotel was. But as chance would have it, wandering in the vague direction of the map in my head and picking the nicest looking hotel (pickings were slim) worked out fine.

I had come to Kushiro as a stop off between travelling to Nemuro - the Easternmost point of Hokkaido (and Japan) - and subsequently Ikeda, a farming town some distance to the West which is renowned for wine-making. However, given the non-event that was Soya and the fact that my guide book said the main attraction of Nemuro was the view over some disputed islands which Russia is misbehaving over (who would have thought), in conjunction with the fact that the weather was grey with snow showers forecast, and that it was a 2.5 hour train followed by 50 minute bus ride (with associated extortionate tourist price tag) away meant that I decided to head to Ikeda directly instead. So really, I needn’t have come to Kushiro at all and could have gone straight to Ikeda. Oh well. Seeing as I was there, I went out for a wander around.

I walked probably around 8km, all the way down the main straight street to the sea and back again via the main part of town. Kushiro is a miserable looking town with a fantastically ugly skyline. One might call it the Gloucester of Hokkaido, but that’s probably a touch unkind. Anyhow there didn’t seem to be much going on, and the South side of town was sad and slightly dilapidated.

Kushiro is reputedly the birthplace of Robata-yaki - food grilled on a barbeque type thing. After walking past every restaurant in town at least five times (I wish I was joking), I finally plumped for one that I thought was serving robata, because I could only read two of the three characters. I was in luck.

I am growing accustomed to the looks of surprise and trepidation that grace (or contort) people’s faces whenever I walk into a place that is unwaveringly Japanese, but oftentimes the tension disappears when I throw out an order for a pint of beer. And this place was to be no different. Although subsequently one of the waitresses started jabbering away at me as if I understood every word, and I got involved, after we’d discussed Scottish golf courses at some length, in a debate on Japanese politics with an old and senior-looking salaryman - dangerous at the best of times, even when speaking the same language. I think he eventually got in a huff because I said I liked Koizumi and the changes he’d brought, and the increasingly worldly attitude of the Japanese youth. I think he was averse to Koizumi primarily because he’d made it more expensive for old people to get medicine, but even if true perhaps he was unaware that years of bureaucratic abuse have necessitated the levying of such charges. Anyhow, he and his colleague gave me some edible, albeit not that enjoyable, giant snail-type things to eat, which I felt obliged to finish, and later a glass of whisky, which I drank in silence. After our debate, the salaryman turned back to his colleague, who asked, “did he understand the conversation?”, to which he replied, “perfectly.”. Ha, I don’t think so - neither the language or his thinking.

Anyway the food was average, the bill expensive, the company difficult and the city ugly. I wouldn’t rush back.

I arrived in Ikeda around lunchtime and thought I would drop my bags at the hostel before venturing out. It turned out to be quite a way from the town itself, which I was partially aware of due to the fact that I was advised to go to the next local train stop and walk from there, which I duly did. On arrival at the hostel there was a sign on the door saying, “open from 2.30″. It was 1.15, so I scrawled a brief note and dumped my bags in the porch.

Since the train services in areas such as this run about once every hour, I decided to walk back to Ikeda. It didn’t look far on my abstract map with no scale. I asked an old lady who I passed in the street how many kilometers it was back to Ikeda station. She chuckled and said, “a fair amount”. Undeterred, I continued, and around an hour later I was back where I started two hours earlier. A splendid use of time.

There weren’t a huge amount of tourist attractions to check out, and first I headed to “Wine-jo” - wine temple. The “castle” that it was housed in was a horrific concrete monstrosity. It reminded me of Bowser’s castle in the Super Mario Bros video games. Except less thunder and lightning etc.

The tour took all of about five minutes to complete, and was completely devoid of English. I did pick up an English pamphlet (which the signs specifically instructed me to get from a specific place), but it was broad-brush almost to the point of block colouring. One of the main reasons for going, in fairness, was to visit the “tasting corner”, but I was rather disappointed that they only had one wine available, a white no less, and as I was the only one sampling it, I felt a little bad about having more than one cup. Yes, cup. From a mini paper cup dispenser. Still, it was novel, and free.

After defeating the evil turtle and gaining an extra life and an invisibility cloak, I set off in search of “Happiness Dairy” for some home made ice cream. The walk felt a little like being in the American heartlands, as I was surrounded by fields interlaced with roads in giant grids. It was around a 2km walk, and my legs were complaining having already walked from the hostel to town, from the town up a hill to the wine castle, and now here. Everyone else who was in the place had come by car. Cheaters. I can’t say I noticed much different about the ice cream from your standard shop-bought ice cream, but their monthly special - strawberry something - I could only read half of the writing - was yummy.

On the way back to the station I stopped off in a small park where a young couple shot past me on a bicycle - a boy driving and a girl in school uniform sitting sideways on the back. Seemingly a fairly standard transportation technique in Japan. Still, they looked like they were having fun. A lady was sitting by a stream writing something, and I perched on a rock near a pond and read for a while in the sunshine.

The owner of the hostel was a very nice guy and after his wife had prepared a feast we ate together and talked about travel and his life. He had been a chemistry student at a university in Kyoto - his home town - but said he was more interested in travelling than studying and would come to Hokkaido to motorcycle around the island in his holidays. Afterwards, he worked in a factory in Kyoto for five years and then a different factory near Sapporo for two years, but then packed it in, travelled for a while with his wife, and opened the hostel in Ikeda. From what I gathered the hostel was only busy for about four months each year, so I’m not sure what they did for cash the rest of the time, but every year they spent around a month travelling, so I guess they must be doing alright somehow. He also told me he’d given me the [Hostelling International] members’ price, which essentially meant he’d given me my meals (dinner and breakfast the next morning - also a feast) for free. Splendid.

I woke up at 5.45 full of anticipation about the journey ahead.

The journey South was again very picturesque passing by mountains and rivers. Unfortunately it is not possible to travel directly along the North-East coast, as it is too remote. After passing through Asahikawa again, the train headed East on the North side of Daisetsuzan national park. Here, the scenery is marshy and open, with wide plains covering the lowland stretches to the coast. I had to change at Abishiro - a nothing looking town which is famous for housing the “Alcatraz of Japan” - a bleak, harsh place which I had little interest in visiting. The lakes just outside of Abishiro were nice to look at from the train window though.

Turning South into Akan national park I could see the snowy peaks of Shiretoko stretching off to the East. The area was recently designated a world heritage site, but again is closed until May, and the far reaches are very remote and only accessible by apparently hardcore hiking/climbing routes.

Twelve hours and around 300 miles later I finally arrived. I stayed in a farmhouse near Mashuu, and was their only guest. It was a large place with creaky floorboards, but somehow staved off any images of horror movie sets. One of the staff offered to take me to the lake in the morning, but laid down so many restrictions I almost felt bad about taking him up on it. But I did.

I ate a microwaved dinner in my room (and managed to explode a sesame dressing sachet over my face, shirt and trousers), and attempted to watch a Japanese game show whilst plotting my next move.

To get things moving, I’ve put up a few posts from the last few days. I will backfill the others as and when I complete them - trying to braindump so much in a short space of time is fairly exhausting!

There is a lesson to be learned in putting faith in the word of the weather man. I awoke to find snow had dusted everything in white, and it was still coming down. If it was snowing now, I thought it might worsen during the day, so I set out for cape Soya anyway. And it was rather dull. Aside from the novelty, there is little to see or do, and there is not much to see either. Apparently on clear days you can see the Russian island of Sakhalin, but not in a blizzard. Ok, slight exaggeration, but couldn’t see much.

Whilst I was loitering in front of a monument thing, an old man came up and asked where I was from. We chatted for a short while, during which time he managed to slip in that his wife had died. I noticed the tour bus that I assumed he had come with was leaving, so I pointed this out to him, and off he went. I messed about trying to find some breakfast (to no avail), took some more pictures and went to the bus shelter to wait for the next (and first) bus home, and the same man was inside, so I felt a little bad about having packed him off when he didn’t need to go. In fact we were almost certainly on the same bus going there, but in my early morning haze I hadn’t taken any notice whatsoever.

We talked some more on the bus going home. He was from Fukuoka, his two daughters were both living in Canada, and he was travelling to some places in Japan alone. His next stop was Otaru.
“Have you been there before?”, I asked.
“Oh, yes, several years ago, before my wife died.”, he replied.
I couldn’t help but feel sad about this. For him to have mentioned it twice within twenty minutes of meeting me, I suppose she must be on his mind a lot. And I could empathise.

I was wary that I was sitting in a “priority seat” reserved for the elderly, the infirm and the pregnant, and when more geriatrics started boarding the bus I thought I’d better move, but I’m not sure how well I communicated that fact to the man. We didn’t speak again for the rest of the journey. When we got off the bus he made some indecipherable noise, and half gestured with his hand to follow him. Needing the toilet anyway, I followed into the bus terminal, wondering if I’d offended him somehow. But when I came back from the bathroom, he thrust ¥3000 into my hand, and insisted that I take it. I was completely thrown by this, and attempted to politely refuse, insisting that I couldn’t take his money, but he was adamant that I did.
“Buy yourself lunch or something. I want to help you.”, he said.
I thanked him as politely as I could, and wandered out into the street, flummoxed.

I thought about why he’d done that for a good while, but couldn’t come up with a good answer. I felt bad for not having taken his address or anything, and as chance would have it I ran into him again as he was leaving the hot springs in town. I asked him if he could write his address for me, but he said, “oh no. That’s alright.” and waved me off as he walked away. I guess it was just the kindness of a stranger. He did give me his name though. It was Tony Honda. I wonder if I heard him right.

I had time to kill until I could check into my hotel, so I went to the hot springs, where I was mistaken for a Russian by a father of two. I shot them a wary glance, but couldn’t be bothered to correct them. I comforted myself with a choco-vanilla ice cream in the café.

The afternoon cleared up quite nicely, but it was still fricking cold. I was beginning to wonder if there was much point staying on in Hokkaido, as it is clearly the wrong “season” to be travelling here. All the tourist information pamphlets assure the reader that Hokkaido is beautiful in all four seasons. Yet April seems to be a nondescript stop-gap. A tourist hinterland.

Later, at dinner, I talked with the restaurant owner. I asked about foreign visitors to Wakkanai, and he said, “A lot of Russians came a few years ago, but in the past couple of years, there haven’t been many at all.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing, do you think?”
He smiled wryly, “A good thing. The Russians are not good people!”
I laughed and told him I’d been mistaken for a Russian at the onsen, but he said I didn’t look Russian at all. And gave me some squid sashimi with fresh horseradish picked from the slopes of the local mountain, and a large glass of sake, gratis. Nice. I also asked him how he thought the East coast would be at this time of year. He laughed, and said, “cold.” Bah.

Shortly after, I found a wallet in the toilets. There was over ¥40,000 (£200) inside. Being the honourable citizen that I am, I gave it over to the restaurant owner, who sought out the forgetful customer. The customer, clearly drunk, came over and praised me for being, “ii gaikokujin” (a good foreign person). The owner agreed. The customer was insistent on giving me a ¥1000 reward, which again I tried to refuse, and again failed.

The next morning, I left Wakkanai as I’d arrived - under glorious sunshine. And with a slightly bitter taste in my mouth.

I woke to a very cold-looking scene outside. Grey as far as the eye could see, and wind rattling the windows. Given that it was 6am, I was strongly tempted to sack it off and go back to sleep, but then I thought I only had this one chance to go, as the weather forecast for tomorrow was even worse. So off I went.

I’m not sure that was a wise decision.

The ratio of boat size to sea swell was probably the least favourable I’d ever experienced. The boat was rocking like a beaten-up teenage hotrod at a drive-in movie theatre.

On stepping off the ferry my nostrils were filled with the unmistakable smell of sea and fish. My lodging’s owner’s husband (or maybe he was the owner, who knows) had travelled over with me to run some errand or other, but I promptly lost him right at the terminal entrance. One second he was there, the next he wasn’t. One of life’s mysteries.

Inside, there was no tourist office because it was out of season. There were no bike rentals. No scooter rentals either. I went to a car rental shop, no car rental because I don’t have international licence. I was shafted, basically.

Noticing my frown, the owner of the car rental shop decided that he would take me to the other side of the island in his car. Awesome.
He chatted to me as we drove - the conversation went something like this:
“Blah blah seagulls blah blah eggs blah blah blah blah blah.”
“Ah is that so?”
“Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.”
“Mmm… Why are there these barriers at the side of the road? Because of the wind?”
“Blah snow blah blah when it falls, it’s difficult to see.”
“I can believe that.”

I realised I’d come to the wrong place once I got out of the car. I had memorised the direction I needed to go in on the wrong island. %@&?.
I had said there were interesting looking stones at the place I wanted to go. He probably thought I was mad, because it was entirely normal. I was wondering why he’d asked me if we had volcanoes in England. Sigh..

Consulting the map, the places I had wanted to go to were probably within walking distance of the ferry terminal. I swore some more, and laughed at my ineptitude.

Since I was there, I walked around the wrong place’s park-type path thing. It was fully exposed to the wind, and bitterly cold. The wind was coming from the North-West, and penetrated flesh. The people in town probably thought, “What is this idiot doing here? Doesn’t he know the tourist season starts in mid-May?”
I was certainly wondering what I was doing there. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if there was any point travelling the rest of Hokkaido if I was going to encounter similar problems (closures, not idiocy). I already knew that the Shiretoko peninsula would be off-limits.

I walked through some people’s backyards and managed to get a few good pictures of the volcano (which could be seen from this side - one good thing since it was entirely shrouded in cloud from the port side) and fishing huts. Then I killed an hour walking between bus stops.
It was very cold.

The town looked as though it was decaying. There seemed to be little or no life, and buildings sloped to the sea, corroded from the salty air and harsh winds. I barely saw a soul out and about, although perhaps this was something to do with weather.

After surveying a variety of bus stops, I chose one with attached indoor shelter, which smelled of urine and rotting food. An old lady came to the same stop, she agreed (or rather asserted) that it was very cold. A senile looking old man was also tottering around. I think he’d wanted to share my shelter previously, but being a foreigner I was obviously very scary to him.

I took the bus halfway round the island to a place I *had* wanted to visit. It was full of geriatrics, who all got off at the same stop. At first I thought it was outside a hospital, and laughed at the notion that everyone was coming to get the pills doled out, but realised it was a hot spring.

I was planning to walk from the place of interest bus stop back to the ferry terminal, but I started to get worried when the bus kept going. And going. And dropped me in seemingly the middle of nowhere. Furthermore, I discovered my place of interest was 500m up a hill. And after walking the 500m, I discovered it was another 750m. And the path back to the terminal was marked as being 4km long. That’s over 7km worth of walking, and I couldn’t afford to miss the ferry. I cursed the lake, and the fact that the mountain couldn’t be seen, and the fact that I couldn’t use any form of transport other than my feet and a bus which runs four times a day. Initially I set off for the lake, but then decided that time-wise it was too risky, so I set off along the trail back to the ferry terminal. Soon, it was covered in deep snow and my feet were sinking. More cursing ensued. I decided that there was no way I was going to walk 4km in snow, so I headed back down to the main road and started walking in the direction of civilization, while the waves blasted against the sea wall. It was a little like an average English day at the seaside - slate-coloured sea, grey sky, howling Siberian wind and temperature hovering around 0ºC.

Walking was quickly getting boring, though I took comfort from the fact that the road signs said it was only a paltry 2km walk. I debated hitchhiking, but couldn’t hear the cars coming due to crashing sea and wind, and the fact that my hat covered my ears, and anyway it was too cold to hang around, so I ended up walking the whole way.

I got back with over an hour to spare. I could have gone to the fricking lake.

I do not get cold easily, but I was chilled to the bone. After taking refuge in a ramen restaurant, I warmed my hands on a hot can(!) of coffee from a vending machine in the ferry terminal, and pledged to return directly to Wakkanai - there was only a 15 minute wait between ferries at Rebun. I had had enough. And I had already spent ¥7000 on my misadventure.

The inside of the ferry was nice and warm, and forgetting the cold as we approached Rebun I thought, “I only have to stay for an hour and forty-five minutes, that’s not so long, I might as well get off and have a look round”. Plus everyone else was getting off, and I felt like a spoilsport for staying on.

I stepped out of the terminal and an ice blast nearly blew my hat off. It would have flown away were it not for my cat-like grabbing reflex. There were sheer hills (if there can be such a thing) in front of me, and the scene looked decidedly bleak. So I thought to hell with it, and got back on the boat. The wisest decision of the day so far.

I tried to make peace with the island by taking pictures from the ferry as it pulled out of port. My hands quickly became numb, and I thought of snappy titles for pictures such as, “Rebun, the island that looks beautiful, and probably is, if you come in the right season”. It does look pretty, but summer would definitely be preferable.

Coming back the sea was even rougher. Sometimes when I looked out of the windows on the lower deck all I could see was sea because the boat was tilted over so much, often followed by a huge plume of sea-spray off the bow as it dipped into the water. If my Mum was there she would have been petrified, but I thought it was quite fun.

When I got home I was confronted by the old lady who runs the place at which I was staying about the amount of laundry I’d given her to do (I’d asked if they had a coin laundry machine so I could wash some clothes). The previous evening she’d said it would be free, but now she was demanding ¥2000 for the trouble! I was somewhat shocked, but gave it over without too much questioning, and then went to sulk in my room about the fact that I didn’t bash her down. Perhaps she was looking for a way to recoup the discount she’d given me on the room (¥1000 over two nights). But what the hell? Tidy profit for her. I was peeved.

I ate dinner at a yakiniku (meat barbeque) restaurant and got free spicy, raw octopus for being a foreigner who spoke Japanese like a three-year old. Result. I also attempted to speak to a sixty (or more) year-old barman at a different place, but often got lost in the detail. Still, I think he thought it was fun given the warmth of his goodbyes, or maybe he was just glad I was going. He gave me his card and urged me to drop by again the next time I was in town.

Tomorrow I will attempt to outrun the weather to the Northernmost tip of Japan - cape Soya. Apparently it could snow in the afternoon. I hope the trains will be running for my ridiculous 12 hour corner-to-corner journey the morning after.

Heading further North the ground was covered in snow. I was thinking that maybe my heavy winter coat had reached the end of its usefulness as the sun was beaming down again in Asahikawa, but perhaps I was wrong. I passed through Nayoro. For some reason the name strikes a chord with me - perhaps it’s deja-vu of sorts. Or maybe it’s just a cute name for a town. A friend had previously mentioned that Nayoro has the *real* best snow in Japan. The mountain looks small, but I felt a pang of disappointment about not being able to see the season out, in Niseko or otherwise.

The train journey was beautifully scenic, passing alongside undeveloped mountainsides and wide alpine rivers. Further along I missed a fantastic photo opportunity as the red sun was poised over the volcano in the sea that is the island of Rishiri. It looked like the fires of mount doom. Afterwards, the train climbed over barren hills covered in what I guessed was bamboo grass. The landscape was like a Japanese equivalent of Bodmin moor. I wonder why they built a town up here, so far away from everything. Predictably the answer was fishing. In this case kelp.

In the evening I followed the old lady of my establishment’s advice and went to a restaurant near to my accommodation. The welcome I received wasn’t the friendliest, I have to say, but the proprietress warmed somewhat when I explained that I’d been given a recommendation to come here from another local. Despite the frosty reception, the saury I ate was the best I’ve ever tasted - so fresh! And the meal set was only 900 yen. So, all in all not too bad. Came home and tried to make a plan for tomorrow. It involves getting up at 6am. Eurgh.