To get from Sounkyo to Abashiri Steve drove us across the eastern half of Hokkaido in continual snowfall. We went through mountains and across plains and via towns much bigger than we would have expected, and have never seen so much snow. As an amusement, we started to calculate the total weight of snow on Hokkaido, but didn't have enough facts at hand!
We arrived for a late lunch of "street food", oysters and soba, at Abashiri's own ice festival which is a local event aimed at children. The kids were there in their droves, with their parents, having a great time playing icy games for prizes (almost impossible to win), squealing as they came down ice slides, participating in what looked like demon dramas, and exploring inside caves sculpted out of ice. All this in extreme cold (-7C), pretty windy, and light snow falling.
The kids' favourite everywhere - Minions at the Abashiri ice festival.
Large and locally relevant sculpture - mountain, lighthouse and white tailed eagle.
With no improvement in the weather, we retreated indoors to the ultra-modern hilltop observatory (nothing to see) which also houses the small but fascinating Okhotsk Ryu-hyo ("Okhotsk Sea Drift Ice") museum. There we discovered how drift ice from Siberia follows wind and current to come round to Abashiri every winter. This year, a notice said, it only arrived on 02 February, just over a week ago. There were come interesting exhibits in the museum but little interpretation in English.
This is how you freeze a wet towel at -15C.
Seal in the drift-ice simulator.
The thing that made this visit memorable was the large drift ice simulator room which was kept at -15C (barely cooler than outside!) in which programmed lighting transitioned from day into night in a matter of minutes. They gave us wet towels which froze in the air just by spinning them around.
Bleak, freezing and snowy at the Okhotsk Drift Ice Museum, but it was bright and warm inide (except for the simulator).
The forecast promised "fine and clear" the next day, and so it came to be with a glorious morning of bright sunshine and little or no wind, but still bitingly cold, about -10C at sunrise. We did a morning cruise on the Aurora, a rated ice-breaker, which in Summer does scenic tours, but now was enlisted to plough through the drift ice for the entertainment of the passengers. We had low expectations for this, since the drift ice has only just arrived, but obviously in comes en masse - it was surprisingly thick, and on one occasion the Aurora hit an ice flow too big, came to a lurching stop, and had to back away.
The ice-breaking cruise was amazingly popular, and countless tour buses poured out customers for the experience. In fact, and luckily, there were two Aurora's on duty - they seemed to put the group travellers on one and the individuals on the other, and both vessels were crowded to say the least. The one hour cruise was good fun and enjoyed by all, the cafe on board did a roaring trade on stuffed buns. We saw many seagulls and cormorants but only one eagle.
From one Aurora to another, heading out to the drift ice.
Drift ice churned up by the Aurora.
All vantage places on the Aurora were occupied.
Channel markers for Abashiri harbour.
A take-away lunch from a bakery in the old part of Abashiri showed that it's a pretty cute town (but mostly closed for a public holiday), and then we went to the Abashiri Prison Museum for an enlightening hour or two. At first we were confused - why build a large prison in rolling foothills - until we realised that this museum is pupose built on a dedicated site using relocated and/or recreated buildings from the original Abashiri prison and others in Hokkaido. The current Abashiri prison is a large establishment on a riverside flat near town, and we imagine that's where the original was too.
Steet art is common and good everywhere we've been, this example in Abashiri's old main street.
These rocky islands seem to be common on this coast. The netting is to minimise dangerous rock and snowfalls.
They've done a great job with this museum, and we learned something of its history. The original prison was established in this remote place in 1867 when the new Meiji government decided on rapid development of Hokkaido to thwart Russian southward expansion. Prisoners were political rather than criminal, it seems, being samurai and supporters who fought against the Meiji Restoration.
Administration building in the recreated Abashiri Prison.
Not even prison museums are immune to Hokkaido's love of ice sculptures.
Big vats in the prison's Miso and Soy Sauce warehouse.
The road constructed by prison labour.
Visitors can test lift loads borne by prisoners.
The museum is full of exhibits like this recreation of a dining room.
Keeping a watchful eye out.
Corridor of the Belgian designed five-winged prison house shows intricate carpentry.
Tattoos get you banned from bathhouses in modern Japan because of their criminal association.
Roofing detail of the prison's recreated lecture hall where inmates were rehabilitated.
The prisoners' were made to work in self-sufficiency food production, but their major achievement, under very harsh conditions, was to build a road from Kitami to Abashiri to thus open up the district. We came through Kitami (a rather large city) on the way here, and travelled on this road, now improved of course. The prisoners built 163km of road in just 8 months, but the hard work and harsh winter caused many deaths. Most interestingly, it is because the residents of Abashiri wanted to recognise and commemorate the efforts, achievements and sacrifice of the prisoners in opening up their district that the museum came to being in the first place. Otherwise the old Meiji era buildings would have been lost.
Our digs at Abashari was a very nice ryokan called Kagaira, 3 or 4km out of town and on a river and lake. Our package here included another very interesting kaiseki dinner, lots of courses, lots of unusual seafood. Traditional ryokans are going to follow tradition of course, but it does make us wonder why it is so inconvenient on arrival to have to take your shoes off before you can even put your bags down. For foreigners like us who can't get our boots off without a struggle at the best of times, not even having a bench to sit on is a pain. And we observed a large Japanese family arrive (3 adults, 2 children and 2 dogs) and have just as much trouble at the door as we did.
Is this a sunny morning or what? Only -10C at our Ryokan Kagairya.
View across the river on a fine morning.
Cute little fox reflector on a bridge.
The private onsen at Kagaiya (downstairs behind the fence) were open air with a tiny, snowy courtyard to cool off in.
As we set out for our next destination, we drove around the edge of the Okhotsk Sea where the drift ice often comes right to the shore. We paused at the tiny town of Koshimizo to climb a small hill up to an observatory built and maintained by the city which allowed spectacular views of the drift ice and also, looking to the east, the ridge of mountains comprising the Shiretoko Peninsula, the most remote place we will visit on this whole Japan trip.
Ainu totem on a beach on Okhotsk Sea.
View of Mount Shari from about 50km away at the Koshimizo observatory.
Steve and Clare in the Koshimizo Observatory.
The JR train to Utoro stops at tiny stations like this one at Koshimizo
Very icy path and steps up to the Koshimizo observatory.
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