Hokkaido - First Imressions

Natural Beauty
After a one and a half hour flight from Tokyo we landed in another world.  The Russian on the airport signs stopped me dead in my tracks.  I later checked the map and noted that Sapporo is closer to Vladivostok than it is to Tokyo.  In addition to Japanese and Russian, the signs were in Chinese and Korean, all close neighbors

I had to recalculate my image of Japan as we passed through the countryside on the way to our hotel, situated an hour away in a small town named Noboribetsu.  I always feel crowded in Japan but not here.  So much wide open beauty - smoldering volcanoes, coastal plains dotted with farmland and forests of varying autumn browns.  The ocean was still like ice and the same color as the sky.

Hokkaido is a separate island with no link to mainland Japan other than an underground rail tunnel.  It is large - as large as Hispaniola or Iceland.  It also has most of Japan's arable farmland and forests and churns out the most wheat, soybeans, potatoes, sugar beets, onions, pumpkins, corn, raw milk, and beef in Japan.  In our four days on the island we ate all of those and more.

Our two tour guides, Honkies (from Hong Kong) who specialize in Japan, took turns on the microphone speaking to Jean's colleagues in Cantonese.  I asked Jean what they were saying, expecting to hear about the beauty passing by my window, but more often than not they were suggesting the best products that can be purchased in each town we were to visit.  These two were real characters - more on that later.

Noboribetsu is renowned for its natural hot springs, powered by the nearby volcano - one of six active on the island.

We took a twenty minute hike to a nearby bluff to take a look.  It was about 40 degrees out and the surrounding lakes were smoking, bubbling at about 110 degrees. 

A few miles away the seas were ringed with multiple defenses.  They were calm now but have been known to surge with seismic activity.

Amazingly there were small houses nestled nearby.  Perhaps in a place with volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis, it doesn't really matter where you settle.  I would take my chances away from the sea, nearer the volcanoes - seems to me there is more warning to an impending eruption.

The hot springs near our hotel were the real thing, my nose told me so.  You could smell the sulphur, even inside the hotel.

Our hotel was amongst a cluster that huddled next to the springs, deep in a forested valley.  This is the view from the hotel lobby.

 

Each room came with its own hot springs tub on the porch.  Apparently they pipe the spring water straight into the hotel.  It was a typical Japanese wooden tub - almost as deep as it was long.  The water was unbearably hot - so much so that I couldn't sit in it for more than a minute at a time.