For The Love of Travel

Hakodate ferry to Aomori journey was ace. The 4 hour trip gave me time to compile my drone photo entries for the 2024 Siena Drone Awards Competition. Its quite the process…you have to come up with a name and description for the series of photos you are submitting, also a name and description for each photo – and there is a word minimum and maximum. I was struggling to get to the minimum. Ah well, we’ll see how they go. Pleased with the set I submitted anyway.

I really wanted to see the Towada Art Centre, given its excellent reputation, but its closed on Mondays….arrrrh! Never mind, just took a few cute photos of the art work on the outside.

The next day, it bucketed down all day …for 200 kms down south as I was travelling, so the photos are from the IPhone. I have cherry blossom fever now that I’m further south and with 15 degree days, there is a chance for those little charmers to bloom. So I have my list of researched locations and also loaded a Satura App on my phone. Pity its such a crap day….anyway, onwards and onwards…

Ishiwarizakura (rock-split cherry tree) was my first stop in Morioka, Iwate Prefecture – an approximately 400-year-old cherry tree, measuring 4.3 metres around the base and 10 metres high,  growing out of a crack in a granite boulder outside a courthouse. It was proclaimed a National Treasure of Japan in 1923. And so well ‘supported’ as it grows.

Kitakami Tenshochi Park, also in the Iwate Prefecture, is right next to the Kitakami River and that’s the place you go for a stroll to admire the 10,000 cherry trees lining the 2km pathway, planted 100 years ago. Not today you don’t 🙂 I sneaked a quick photo at one end the pathway and darted back to the car.

I was driving through the lovely little village of Kitatenma, where houses are as you imagined they’d be in Japan, with veggie gardens; bonsai’d plants and niwaki’d cloud trees and saw this magnificent specimen of cherry in a kids park –

Bravely carrying on, my last stop was at Mizusawa Park in Oshu City, that was designed in 1878 by the wandering painter and landscape architect, Minomushi Sanjin and today, is filled with about 500 sakura. Took lots of pics but decided to scrap most…even greyer and more ‘blown out’ than the below pic. You have to be ruthless!

Dramas at the Hotel Crown Hills Sendai Aobadori. I booked because they had onsite parking. When I arrived, was told my rental car (a teeny tiny cube car) wouldn’t fit the car stack parking system. So the closest external car park was 400m down the road….very underwhelming experience, dragging luggage through rain to the hotel. Also cheesed off with Booking.com, who seemingly don’t care that their website about this hotel doesn’t mention any height limits on vehicles. GRRR! ….Thank you for the debrief.

Lots of fog when I left this morning and I was immediately worried about what that meant for the sites I would be visiting that morning. Well, as you would have it, brilliant sunshine at my first port of call at Oyunuma Pond, a natural footbath at the Oyunuma River that flows from a lake of the same name. Except the walkway to it was closed half the way along, so I got to see a tiny waterfall, cascading gracefully into a teeny tiny area that could be referred to as a mini pond. Lots of sulphur smells though!

Brilliant weather at the Jigokudani crater (aka Hells Valley) just a few minutes up the road. Its a spectacular valley just above the town of Noboribetsu Onsen, which displays hot steam vents, sulfuric streams and other volcanic activity (mercifully not the latter when I was there). There are lots of walkways through the valley to see the activity close up. You can see a few puffs of sulphur in the bottom left hand corner of the pic.

I was told by the Visitor Centre in Teshikaga that I wouldn’t be able to see bears cavorting in any hot springs as they were (derrr!) in hibernation. So my substitute this afternoon was visit the Yakumocho Kiborikuma Museum. Yakumo is the birthplace of Hokkaido’s specialty – carved wooden bears, which started in 1923 when Tokugawa Yoshichika brought back carved bears from Switzerland, encouraging farmers to take up the craft. The Yakumo bears differ from those produced elsewhere as they feature fur lines extending downwards from the shoulder. And since Yakumo farmers have raised bear cubs as models for their carving, many feature soft facial expressions and playful gestures. Awh, adorable!

My last task today was to get some shots of Mt Komagatake, a 1,131m high active volcano straddling the towns of Mori, Shikabe and Nanae. It used to have a cone shape like Mt Fuji, but the summit collapsed during a major eruption in 1640. There are a number of viewing points but I chose 2 – from a freeway ‘pull in’, as below…

And also from Kogetsu Bridge in Nanae, in the Onuma Quasi National Park….happy with those shots too.

My last night in Hokkaido, on the ferry early tomorrow morning and back to the (main) island of Honshu.

A stunning start to the day. The Sogakudai viewpoint on route 241 commands a spectacular view of Mt Oaken and Mt Meaken in the background. Both are included in Japan’s list of its top 100 scenic mountains. The drive is winding and you have to watch out for red deer and foxes.

I was looking forward to my next stop, Lake Onneto, wanting to experience its ‘mysterious charms’, in the words of a brochure. I knew it wouldn’t have a ‘kaleidoscope of colours’, or reflections of Mt Meahan….I put droney up and almost lost it, as the signal failed mid flight and it wasn’t connected to the remote anymore. I pushed a couple of buttons and after a couple of seconds of nothing….discovered it was making its way back to me…phew! And Lake Onneto was completely frozen over apart from a tiny bit of melt at one end.

Drove past the Akanko Ainu theatre where one can enjoy performances of Lost Kamuy, which combines Ainu ancient ceremonial dance with digital art and contemporary dance. And just further along, shy deer who had just skipped across the freeway, were interested to see me drive away.

The 258km Doto Expressway is extraordinary. It has a 70km speed limit along its whole length (not that Japanese citizens adhere) and an impressive series of tunnels. It connects the east of Hokkaido with central regions including Sapporo. So many beautiful vistas along the pathway. There was one section in particular, where all you could see in front of you, was the whole horizon covered by mountains, wowser!! The next pic is of just a tiny section of road that I liked coming around (no, there were no cars behind me at the time!)

There’s also a system of being able to pull off the freeway every 60kms or so – time for a coffee and loo break. One spot I had a brief rest at, had a miniature horsey for kids to ride and parents could take cute photos of them against a gorgeous backdrop. Adorable.

I had heard about Hoshino Resorts and their Unkai Terraces development, trying to get you to experience ‘being up in the clouds’, looking out from structures (sky wedge, contour bench, cloud pool) over nature, selling cloud-themed sweets (see Cloud9 ice cream below 🙂 and drinks (cloud bar). I drove as far up the mountain as I could before having to turn back because of…icy road conditions. Lots of different cable cars taking you up to different levels of ski run. The one I took a pic of below I reckon is like “Bourke St” @ Mt Buller :). Check out the vegetation you can wrap yourself around at the base of the run….that would put me off for sure!