So let's do this, finally. Its already pretty late at night though.
shiretoko is the place at the top of japan, not wakkanai, the most north peninsula, thats where i went before, this is the other one, the most biologically diverse one. Its like a huge nature park. A Rotarian from a city norht of Sapporo took all 4 of us exchange student on a three day trip up there, and I am so greatful to him for it.
This man was the only other person staying at our bed and breakfast that we stayed at on night one, when we arrived he was all red eyed form riding and kinda scary, turned out he had ridden all the way up from Osaka alone and his wife called once a night to check on him. He was utterly in awe of us, especially me and the finnish girl's japanese, he said he had spent so much time trying to learn english and never got anywhere (he was actually quite good with vocabulary, just no real sentences) and he was amazed at our skill level and he couldnt stop tlaking about it. He talked to us all night and asked us questions and told us things and told me how im young and seeing the world and its the best thing I can be doing and he loves being on the road on his bike because of the people he meets and the things he sees, i wish i could remmeber more of what he said, it was relaly heartfelt and inspiring and when we woke up the next day he decided to tag along with us on his osaka licensed motorcycle.
we went to an active volcano/geyser and cooked hardboiled eggs.
we went to a lake but couldnt see due to the fog.
we went to a natural hotspiring that lead into a lake, the lake was so cold, the finnish girl, with her heart of ice, went into the actual lake for a swim and then got to cold to move to come back to shore and was surely going to die out there in the waist deep icewater. I got half way out there to save her and she made it back on her own. The hotspring was nice but full of algae and algae fights occured more than once.
After this motorcycle guy said he had to get back on the road and stay on his own schedule. we exchanged a lot of opinions and knowledge with him and it was really good feeling to have someone so interested in anything that comes out of your mouth.
we visited the Russia/Japan friendship museum. A big chunk of the russian mainland used to belong to Japan, and after the second world war they lost it, even some actual japanese islands went to Russia, Japanese people had to leave there, like my current host grandmother. The museum was all about the issues that followed and are still going on today.
a really cool portrait of an ainu done in japanese stye. too bad you cant really see.
After dropping us off at the museum our Rotarian went off to his orthodontist convention (his real reason for making this trip) and we were left to call a cab to the bus station and then taker the bus out to here:
It went smoothly and the bus driver gave us a bunch of good adivec about what to see and when to be back at the bus stop and stuff, just to us, as if we were regular japanese, that would never happen in the city im sure of it. Anyway it was foggy.
I sometimes talk about Japan being really clean, but the sea and beaches are so filthy that you want to cry, japanese people hardly ever swim. Mind you this picture is taken outside the natural park of course.I went down on the rocks to get a shot of some animal,
it was a sea otter.
this is a picture of a picture, if the weather was better we could see this island, its russia.
and so with everything seen, we got ourselves on the bus and went back to the town we were in before, and this guy pulled his car up to us just because we were young gaijin in a town where there are never gaijin and invited us to his conert the next night, we had to decline because we'd be gone, but he told us there was a festival at the local temple, so we went there and filled up on octopus balls and festival food and every kid there was just amazed by how not japanese we were and asked us questions or just hid behind their mothers. There was a mexican masked wrestling show.We met up with our Rotarian after shopping around town and passing two men speaking loudly in Russian who greated us ludly in Russian, I didnt know what to do and without thinking greated them in Japanese. haha?
next we went to the fish hook peninsula! famous home of the tanchyou, some kind of giant crane witha red head, big as an ostrich if u ask me, they were really far away and i couldnt get them with my crummy borrowed camera but i could see them with the binoculars perfectly! and they were doing some amazingly intricate mating dance. He said we were extremely lucky to see such a thing, I love it there, you could see the sea on either side of the road and every five meters there were 5 deer standing staring at you, and more of those cranes, and a fox.
We stopped at this place for the night.
On the last day we went to actual shiretoko, the peninsula with the famous five lakes and the mountains. It was pretty packed with motorcycle tourists and bus tours from china and korea and stuff, but it was so loaded with nature, i looked in the water and saw all kinds of stuff moving everywhere and wish i could have taken better pictures.
we walked to the end of this platform, from which you could see the ocean.We then began our long ride home, all the way across hokkaido in a day, we stopped at the old prison turne dinto a museum, a pretty famous work prison.
In Japanese culture having a tattoo is considered very dirty and for bad people, mafia members usually have full body tattoos. Tattoo is only just recently becoming popular among non criminals. I have seen maybe less than ten tattooed people this year.
This guy, escaped from death row 3 times, he like rotted the wood that held the iron bars in his cell door with miso soup ot soy sauce or something, he hid and lived in a cave and then his case was proven to have been self defense and he was a free man, very famous story apparently.
japanese prison shanks.
on our way home through some town we saw this festival going on.
I odnt know why I didnt take nay pictures but we also went to an Ainu village which was mostly gift shops, but the shop keepers were ainu people. One lady taught me how to uise this instrument, it sounds like a dijiridoo and I had to buy it, another unmistakabely ainu old man gave the finnish girl some stuff to feed his dogs with, he was quite amazed by her hair color and I was quite amazed by him in general. We also got to go into a traditional ainu house and listen to an ainu woman talk to just us for a whole hour, she said there are many many Ainu people living in Hokkaido still but they have come to look like Japanese and you wouldnt know if you saw them.It's weird having to speak Japanese with non-Japanese people, We have to do this with the Sri Lankan girl at school aswell.
The drive home was long and we made two more stops at big waterfalls and had yakiniku for dinner and didnt get home till like 10 at night, but I will never forget our trip to shiretoko and what I saw and learned and who I met. I might put more effort into this entry if I get time. Theres lots of pictures to enjoy for now at least.
I'll be home unbearably soon! I'm excited and sad. reverse culture shock will be intereting enough that I might keep writing about it for a while. thanks for reading.
