Having checked out of the Yorouchi with some sadness, our scheduled morning activity was a canoe ride through marshlands which, we saw, in spring would be the nesting areas for the wonderful red crowned cranes which we hoped to see later in the day. The boss canoe man was a guy who has spent years in New Zealand being a mountain guide for Japanese tourists. His office was full of kiwi artifacts and a NZ internet radio station was playing. He and his offsider both had very good English.
The red-crowned crane is an icon of Hokkaido and Japan, and its image appears everywhere.
The canoe went into a quiet creek which is an overflow from Lake Toro somewhere between Shibecha and Kushiro. We paddled to where the creek meets the Kushiro River which flows to the Pacific Ocean. We saw two other canoes, but not much in the way of wildlife, a few deer, ducks and eagles at a distance. Sadly, we just missed seeing a steam-train which runs every day in February.
Fellow canoers on this quiet marshland.
Almost perfectly camoflaged deer by the river.
Out of season, the trees are not so pretty.
The overall river scene is quite photogenic.
We saw this Stellars Sea Eagle from the road. The canoe operator told us he sits here every day/
Late in the day Steve went into the area known as Tsurui on a crane hunt. Tsuru means "cranes" and the "i" at the end apparently makes it "live here". He tried a couple of places, talked to a few photographers, but at first we only saw cranes at a distance. But then we passed another place where a farmer or shopkeeper puts out food, and found a good number of the treasured cranes pecking in the snow and flying off to their night roosting places.
Pickings are poor for red-crowned cranes in winter, but the community makes sure they have enough to eat.
It's important to say that community nurturing of these cranes is an important part of their rescue from near extinction, especially in winter. Overdevelopment caused their near demise (only 30 left!) but the Tsurui community embarked on a program to save them and there are now a total of 1000 in Japan, all in Hokkaido. The cranes are migratory, but the meagre Japanese population has been conditioned to moving only 150km between summer and winter because of their loss of habitat.
Photographers watch every move of the cranes as they forage in the snow.
The red-crowned cranes are among the biggest cranes and get their name from a patch of bare red skin at their forehead, which gets brighter during mating. Other than that, they are snow white in colour, with some black feathers in their wings.
The cranes build up a gallop to take off.
In flight, there is nothing more graceful than these large cranes.
These are precious birds indeed, and are absolute icons in Japan. Japan Air Line's logo features a red-crowned crane, as does one series of Japanese bank notes, and their mating ritual is one of Japan's 100 soundscapes. How wonderous to be able to find them so easily. (In fact, earlier in the day, we spotted a few more, although too distant to photograph.)
Those black feathers are on the wing, not the tail, as you might think when they're on the ground.
Getting dark, these red-crowned cranes and heading to their roosts.
We stayed the last two nights of our Hokkaido journey in Lake Akanat the New Akan Hotel, maybe called the Shangri-la in some previous existance. This is a big nine storey place which has been visibly extended three times around the lake front, no doubt as the owners managed to acquire more property. Our room was billed as "western" and had a bed, but it was shoes-off on entry, devoid of a chair although it did have a huge day lounge beside the large bay window which offered us a great view of the lake.
Lake Akan Hotel from the frozen lake, huge restaurant at bottom, onsens up top.
Icy predawn light over the frozen Lake Akan showing skating circuit plus rental of ice fishing tents and snow mobiles.
Sign within the hotel warns of rather low temperatures today.
Tough work learning to skate when it's -20C and blowing snow.
No kaiseki here, we had buffet dinners and breakfasts which were excellent in range and quality, but the whole scene was one of pandemonium. Everyone in the hotel crowded into a very large restaurant space over a relatively short period of time. It's madness, and the poor staff were worked off their feet. Western items were available from the buffet (cereal, fried egg, bread for toast etc) but no cutlery. We found a butter knife and a fruit fork. During the day, the hotel is so quiet, we figure everyone is off doing tours.
In this giant dining room, we studied the crowd (and listened to their language) and realised that there are not so many Japanese staying in this particular hotel (but there are plenty of others). At least on the days we were here, the guests were mostly Chinese and Korean with a sprinkling from South East Asia. And not a single westerner, except for ourselves. Lake Akan is still popular with Japanese people - they seemed to arrive by car, and are maybe just on day trips from, say, Kushiro. The best parking area in town is the frozen lake - that probably doesn't work so well in summer!
One of hundreds of ice fishing shelters that you can rent on Lake Akan.
You can hire snow mobiles or dune buggies, but a ride on a banana sled was the most popular in the foul conditions.
Again, huge areas over two storeys of the hotel were devoted to "bathrooms". The locker rooms were unusually palatial. There were segregated large indoor and outdoor pools. On the building roof there was an arrangement we hadn't come across before, a large non-segregated pool and smaller segregated baths and also jacuzzis. Unexpectedly, you had to cover up to visit the top floor areas, and they lend you "bathing shorts or bathing gowns" which, frankly, look ridiculous but preserve modesty. We think this area is the preserve of tourists and not the Japanese. But this didn't detract from the sheer pleasure of a steaming hot bath while heavy snow falls on your head!
Lake Akan, Akan-ko, is a volcanic lake formed about 6000 years ago. Part of the touristy village we stayed in is Akan Kotan which appears to be a spiritual homeland for those Ainu people who are aware of their origins. Most Ainu are fully assimilated and interbred, it seems, and unknowing of their roots, so the "Ainu" population is uncertain (25,000-250,000), but there are enough here to run a village of souvenir shops and an evening cultural presentation which we attended in a very well equipped theatre. The troupe we saw consisted of seven young Ainu women, a couple of older women, and an elderly gentleman - they danced, sang and played a traditional instrument, a tiny stringed thing with amazing tonal variation. To us the performers looked like any other Japanese, which is no surprise since both races originally descended from Mongolian clans warring since the late 1300's. There are apparently some evolutionary differences between the Ainu and the dominant Yamato people of Japan (120m of 129m), but we couldn't see them in their faces.
Snowy entrance to the Ainu People's village.
Even the polar bears are cold in Lake Akan!
New Tourist Centre at Lake Akan is styled with Ainu motifs.
To the Ainu, the great Cikap Kamuy owl was the god of the land and all other owls.
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