25 July, 2017
We are flying with Jetstar this morning from Narita to Sapporo in Hokkaido, Japan. I am not a fan of Jetstar as we have to be spot on with our luggage weight (or under); check-in is a mass production process and the plane is usually uncomfortable.
Despite checking in online and downloading an App so that we can show a Q Code when we drop our bags we still have to do a check in again at the airport and print our baggage tags and a boarding pass before queuing up to just about do a complete third check in to drop our bags. Once they started loading the plane Lynn was one of the first through the gate as she had her usual window seat. They boarded adults with children first then window seaters. I went through a few minutes later and was amazed that we were then to be bussed to the plane. As I boarded the bus there was Lynn on the same bus… And the point of boarding the window seaters first was????
Jetstar is a far cry from JAL. The seats were small and hard and I couldn’t sit with my legs together as there was only enough leg room for people under 5 feet tall. Even the average-height Japanese gentleman beside me didn’t fit. By the time we were all on board and the luggage was loaded we were already 30 minutes late. Now we were in a slow procession on the taxi way waiting to take off. This day is not starting well. Little did we know that this was the best that this day was going to be.
We arrived at Sapporo’s New Chitose Airport (miles away from Sapporo City) about 45 minutes late but we have booked and paid for a hire car so we still have over 2 hours drive to our – night stay at Obihiro.
Now anyone who has ever rented a car knows that the business is cut throat and there are many companies competing for the business. In Japan there is a significant amount of discrimination and any non-Japanese who want to rent properties or cars can be rejected for any reason. The Nissan Car Rental desk was processing Japanese clients quickly without any documentation but when a German couple and myself wanted to complete our transactions the Nissan Car Rental desk were making all sorts of excuses not to process the paperwork. Both of us were denied a car as they were not happy with our international drivers licenses. After some heated arguments by both of us we left without a car and were very frustrated with Japanese bureaucracy. Ironically, the German couple were now late for their meeting with Nissan Japan! I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall during that meeting. I just swore that I would never rent or drive another Nissan as long as I lived. Mind you, I disliked Nissans anyway.
The next problem is how do we get to Obihiro? The reason that we had booked a car for Hokkaido is that Lynn wanted to see more of countryside Japan and Hokkaido has lots of mountains, lakes and wilderness. Without a car we won’t be seeing much.
Hopefully we will be able to find a hire car in a smaller town like Obihiro, but we still have to get there first.
Japan is relatively well serviced by public transport and there is a JR train that leaves Sapporo airport but we will need to change trains to get to Obihiro. It is now 2:30 pm and we have burnt a fair amount of time dealing with the bureaucrats at Nissan. Just as an aside…. a non-resident cannot acquire a SIM card to make phone calls for a mobile phone in Japan if staying for less than 90 days. This country is returning to its isolationist policies of the 17th Century and is getting further out of step with the rest of the world. Different from Chine-ism in that they don’t do it because they don’t know any better but Jap-ism is just that someone makes a rule and nobody dares question why it is there. Refer to why the Coral Sea battles were lost.
I digress…. Anyway, the JR train doesn’t depart until 4:30 pm, it is over A$100 for the two of us and it will take over 4 hours due to the changing train requirements. Our other option is to take what is known as a “highway bus”. It is about A$85 but it goes direct to the centre of Obihiro and our hotel is only about 1 km from there – a short taxi ride. The bus will only take about 2 hours but also doesn’t depart until 4:30 pm. We bought a couple of bus tickets and found ourselves a comfortable couch to wait for the bus.
The bus leaves on time and is very comfortable with 3 seats across – one each at the windows and one in the middle of the bus – even more so than the JR trains. We even have fast and free WiFi all the way. The scenery is interesting and I even watch a bit of Netflix on the way.
We arrived on time and without incident and took a taxi up the road to the hotel. Check in was also not without incidence… I tried to pay for the hotel only to find that my Amex credit card would not work. It seems that some bright spark at CBA had noticed that we had a lot of international transactions on our card including payments for our accommodation in Taiwan and Hong Kong so “for security reasons” our card was stopped. Nice if we had been notified by email first!
Can this day get any worse? At least the hotel is nice and our room is big. We even have a closet Swedish Sauna in our room. We are too tired and frustrated with things tonight so we will just go next door to Pizza Hut for dinner and sort things out in the morning.
Just to put the finishing touches on a bad day we ordered two Pizzas (one medium and one large) and the total bill for take away came to A$67. Tomorrow has to be a better day!
26 July, 2017
After a good night’s sleep and a very ordinary breakfast we are ready to do battle with Jap-isms.
Obihiro is a relatively small country town without any real redeeming features – i.e. it is pretty ugly and has all the traits of a dying town. It is, however, surrounded by lakes, mountains and forests. All of which are out of reach for us without a car. It may be 5 days of boredom if we can’t rent a car.
Apparently it is high season here in Obihiro. Can’t see it myself as there is not much activity in town. There is a brochure in our room offering discounts on car rental at the local Orix car hire company so I asked the hotel manager to call them but they advised him that they had nothing available as it is high season.We even tried Rentalcars.com but also without any luck. Things are looking grim.
We head out after breakfast to check out the town by foot and look at options to get to our next destination by JR train or another bus. As we walk down the street we get a flash of Vietnamese deja vu – a street PA system that emits endless chatter.
We also decided to do the rounds of the car hire companies in town to see what we can rent. Our first two stops came with the same response…. nothing available. Next we went to Toyota Car Rental and after some lengthy communication using Google Translate by both sides the lovely young ladies booked us a Hybrid Toyota for collection tomorrow afternoon. We have to return the car to Obihiro but we should be able to get a JR train or a bus to Sapporo City after our 15-days travel around east, north and central Hokkaido. Again we are told that it is high season in Obihiro so train and bus tickets may not be available so we are still not out of the woods (or literally “in the woods”) yet.
We high tail it over to the bus station and manage to book two tickets to Sapporo on 11 August. However, when I try to pay for them the AmEx still doesn’t work. Luckily my Mastercard does and we are all set. Let’s just hope there aren’t any last minute glitches with the car rental tomorrow.
We head back to the hotel and I get on the phone to CBA and am told that the issue with the AmEx is all fixed. Time for dinner and a lot of alcohol. We find a little restaurant out of the way and order a large bottle of Californian white wine.
We have our own booth and a little button to order service. We even have our own menu tablet in English and we can just select our food and magically it arrives. The food and wine are good and very reasonably priced. Things are at last looking up.
However, there is still a nasty surprise…. now neither of our Mastercard or AmEx work! Bloody CBA! We have to pay cash and I am not happy!
27 July, 2017
Today is the day that we find out if we are going to be just seeing the small towns of Hokkaido by train or if we going to do some back-roads Japan as planned.
The car is booked for a 2:00 pm collection so today we plan to visit the city parklands and check out the rest of the town that we missed yesterday.
It is so much cooler up here than Tokyo – 1,260 kms away – and today’s maximum is only going to be 26 deg. C. Nice walking weather. We took 45 minutes to get to the main park. We found a sport being played by older citizens that looked like a cross between golf and croquet. They have nine holes and use just one club that has no loft and looks like a very short driver. The ball is about twice the diameter of a golf ball, very heavy and colourful. They all carry a lot of related paraphernalia in a ‘tool’ bag at their waists. There are no real greens, just an extension of heavily-grassed 50 metre fairways. The holes are about 400mm in diameter – buckets really – and the pin is not removed at putting time.
Lynn instantly dubs the game ‘Groquet’. While a group of these Groquet players tallys up their scores I ask to see one of the balls. The owner (without any spoken words) suggests that I have a go so he sets up the ball on the tee and hands me his club. The club is very short and heavy so I give it a good hit. The ball in this game only runs along the ground and the grass is fairly long so although I gave it a good clout it only just makes the distance but just like my golf drive is about 5 degrees off line. The owner goes after the ball and still manages to sink it from my wayward shot and return with another birdie down the ninth hole.
What a great game for retired golfers.
We continue our walk past a children’s water park, tennis courts, bike-ways and running tracks as well as a Zoo and a lake. This is such a contrast from the less than smart town.
Time for a short break back at the hotel before we try to finalise a car rental.
Off I go again to Toyota Car Rental. I am so relieved when the deal is completed. The Amex doesn’t work, of course, but the Mastercard does. The GPS is going to be a challenge as although it has an English option, most of the menu options are in Japanese. At least we have a car and we do have our phones as GPS backups.
We plan to do a shake down drive this afternoon to get used to the car and the GPS as well as driving in Japan. We plan to go south to a small lake about 50km away then come straight back before dark. I add the destination in for this short test drive and the destination for tomorrow’s drive and we head out. About 3 km into the journey Lynn suggests that we are going in the opposite direction. It seems that the GPS preferred to go to tomorrow’s planned destination so why fight it. A test destination can be anywhere.
We end up in the hills north of Obihiro at a lake called Shikaribetsu.
Up and back to the lake in about 2.5 hours. Although the little Hybrid has the power of a skate board in need of lubricating it has plenty of room and will do us nicely for the next 15 days.
By the time we return to the hotel it is time for dinner. During our exploration of the town centre we came across a restaurant that had a green bunny as its logo. Lynn affectionately named the restaurant the “Boiled Bunny”.
The green signature drink is provided free to all patrons and is a mix of our favourite childhood drink, GI Lime Cordial, and lemonade.
The food was good and the bill was very reasonable. They also take credit card. Except that my Amex didn’t work! Again! I drag out the Mastercard and pay the bill.
Back at the hotel I am again back on the phone to CBA. It turns out the idiot from yesterday didn’t unlock the card. Let’s hope today’s call centre lightweight has done better! I will not be happy if it fails again tomorrow. What a week so far and it is only Thursday.
28 July, 2017
According to TV news in the breakfast room a typhoon is heading across southern Honshu which we left 2 weeks ago!
By the time we have breakfast and are ready to hit the road for our first full day road-trip in Japan the weather has clouded over and looks dreary. We are only about 10 km down the road and it starts to rain. It will stay that way all day and, at times, be driving rain.
We are heading south for a day trip to Cape Erimo which is famous for its strong winds and summer kelp harvests. It is only about 120 km to the Cape so we will return after a drive west along the coast road then inland via Aeru, known for a large number of horse studs, then the Goshiki Gorge.
The Erimo Cape hosts a population of Kurile seals, as well as a museum dedicated to wind (kaze-no-yakata). While the main industry is fishing (salmon and squid in particular), Erimo’s most famous industry is kelp which is harvested by most of the native residents during the summer months. The kelp is sold in Japan as Hidaka konbu, and Erimo has a museum in the main part of town dedicated to kelp and fishery.
The Hidaka Mountains come right down to the ocean at Erimo. For that reason, the road north to Hiroo had to be carved out of the rock. The road is known as the Golden Road (Ōgon-dōro), because it cost so much to build.
By the time we arrived at the Cape it was belting down. This reminds us of some of the road trips we did in Ireland where we arrived at our destinations but couldn’t get out of the car.
Since it snows here for many months of the year all the bus shelters on the bus routes are like little huts with their own heating.
I braved the wind and rain to take a couple of photos but even in the middle of summer it was freezing outside. Yesterday it was 30 deg. C and today it is lucky to be 10 with a wind chill factor reducing that even further.
From the Cape we drove west along the coast road through Hidaka Yabakei Gorge then on to Urakawa Yushun Village which is known for a large number of horse studs and the Aeru Horse Wonderland resort.
We are now in the mountains and travel through some impressive road tunnels until we stop at the Goshiki Gorge.
Goshiki Gorge is a scenic spot located upstream of the Niobetsu River, a tributary of the Hidaka-Horobetsu River running along the Tenma Kaido Road, which connects the Hidaka area and the Tokachi area in Hokkaido. This 10-kilometre forested gorge is counted as one of the 10 fine scenic spots in Urakawa Town. Located almost in the middle of the route crossing the Hidaka Mountain Range, which is called “the spine of Hokkaido”. We stopped at a lay-by at Suimeibashi Park to take some photos.
There seems to be no let up in the rain today so it is time to head back and dry off. Dinner and sake sounds just fine right about now.
It is still raining by the time we are ready to walk down the street for dinner so it is out with the spray jackets and an umbrella. We are going back to the Shirokiya Restaurant where we had dinner on our first night here in Obihiro. I just love the service button and the electronic order board. Let’s hope the credit cards work tonight.
I couldn’t tempt Lynn into trying the horse sashimi tonight but we both warmed up with a sake each.
29 July, 2017
This is our last full day here in Obihiro and the weather has cleared up overnight so we are off for another drive through the countryside. This time we will be visiting the Satsunaigawa Dam and the Pyoutannotaki Falls – where we were planning to go when we first got the hire car and the GPS took us in the opposite direction.
We drove as far as we could past the dam and parked the car along with a number of other cars whose owners were donning their fishing waders and loading up with the latest trout fishing equipment.
The track leading down from the bridge ended just under the bridge so we stepped over the bear shit (no, they don’t always shit in the woods, this one preferred the track) and headed down to the river’s edge.
The rocky and sometimes muddy river bank made the walking hard work but we headed upstream as far as we could go until we came to a point where two streams met. The water is beautifully clear and fresh but we don’t see any fish so maybe the fishermen are just getting away from their noisy home life.
The weather is very different from yesterday. It is in the mid 20s today and other than some mist on some of the mountains it is a beautifully clear day.
Our next stop is back at the Satsunaigawa Dam wall. We park the car next to the Dam wall and walk across the Dam to the County Government Office where we are allowed in to look around the displays of the Dam construction and some of the wildlife exhibits and displays. The Dam was completed in 1998 and is used for flood mitigation and hydro-electric generation.
As we are leaving the offices Lynn notices a bevy of butterflies near the Dam wall. She seems to be fascinated by these bugs and considering she covers herself with bug spray even when we go out in the middle of a large city I can’t see why. She gets closer than I expect her to and these bugs don’t seem to be put off by her repellent. Maybe it just doesn’t work?
There is a small park just below the Dam spillway so we drive down to have a snack and enjoy the water and the sunshine.
From the spillway it is just another 5 minute drive downstream to the Pyoutannotaki Falls. Not sure that I would call it a waterfall. More like a cataract dam built around a few rocks. Still, the area is peaceful and this weather is stunning.
Time to head back to Obihiro and do some mundane tasks like laundry and packing for tomorrow’s short 100km drive to Kushiro.
I am ordered to stop a few times on the way back so that Lynn can take more photos of barns. They are like Japanese Shrines to me….. all a bit pointless.
By the time we finish our chores we need to manage a quick dinner before the country town restaurants all close up early on a Saturday night. Back to the Boiled Bunny….
This time I make room for one of their specialty “Sundae” desserts.
Lynn couldn’t possibly “fit” a dessert in but she still managed to eat half of mine. Probably a good thing.
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