Sunday, August 03, 2003
Been here a week now and still loving it! We've got most of the place finished now, bedroom, living room, kitchen and bathroom areas looking nice. Only the spare room/front room/office (?!) needs finishing now. I'll get some pictures up on-line ASAP, especially of the views which are really nice.
Weather hasn't been too good recently, although it should be improving any time now...nevertheless we went on a long day-trip yesterday to Akan National Park, which is surprisingly near to us, took about an hour to get there. It contains three big lakes, lots of small ones, and a few volcanoes too. We went to the main resort town on Akan Lake and wandered about there a bit. Lots of shops selling Ainu (native-Japanese I suppose you could call them) woodcrafts, the usual souvenirs and marimo - these are an almost unique feature of this lake, a kind of ball of algae which forms on the lake bottom by rolling down it and gets bigger over the years. You can buy tiny ones to nurture as pets! Next time...
We walked through the woods on the lake shore and found an area with pools of bubbling volcanic mud, and sulphur smoke coming from the ground. Signs warned not to walk on the lake shore at that point otherwise you'd "sink into the water to get scalded". It was raining most of the time which was good as there was hardly anyone around! It's usually very crowded at this time of year.
After that we drove to another lake, Lake Kussharo and walked on a little peninsula where there are a few very basic, open-air onsen (hot springs for bathing). Here the hot water runs just under the surface of the beaches, and you can dig your own onsen almost anywhere! At the tip of the peninsula, we could see huge clouds of sulphur smoke pouring from the rocks, very smelly but awe-inspiring.
When we got back to Kitami we decided to go out to dinner at a restaurant we'd seen, called Viva El Paso casual food house. It looks like some kind of ranch-house, and what with the name we expected Tex-Mex food...but no, just the normal Japanese "family restaurant" menu! But it was very good, nice atmosphere and quite cheap too, so we were not too disappointed.
Weather hasn't been too good recently, although it should be improving any time now...nevertheless we went on a long day-trip yesterday to Akan National Park, which is surprisingly near to us, took about an hour to get there. It contains three big lakes, lots of small ones, and a few volcanoes too. We went to the main resort town on Akan Lake and wandered about there a bit. Lots of shops selling Ainu (native-Japanese I suppose you could call them) woodcrafts, the usual souvenirs and marimo - these are an almost unique feature of this lake, a kind of ball of algae which forms on the lake bottom by rolling down it and gets bigger over the years. You can buy tiny ones to nurture as pets! Next time...
We walked through the woods on the lake shore and found an area with pools of bubbling volcanic mud, and sulphur smoke coming from the ground. Signs warned not to walk on the lake shore at that point otherwise you'd "sink into the water to get scalded". It was raining most of the time which was good as there was hardly anyone around! It's usually very crowded at this time of year.
After that we drove to another lake, Lake Kussharo and walked on a little peninsula where there are a few very basic, open-air onsen (hot springs for bathing). Here the hot water runs just under the surface of the beaches, and you can dig your own onsen almost anywhere! At the tip of the peninsula, we could see huge clouds of sulphur smoke pouring from the rocks, very smelly but awe-inspiring.
When we got back to Kitami we decided to go out to dinner at a restaurant we'd seen, called Viva El Paso casual food house. It looks like some kind of ranch-house, and what with the name we expected Tex-Mex food...but no, just the normal Japanese "family restaurant" menu! But it was very good, nice atmosphere and quite cheap too, so we were not too disappointed.
# posted by Phil T : 5:14 pm
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