(And just letting you know this blog is gonna be pretty long...)
Ok so we went on a family trip around Hokkaido, travelling to the east side, then back to the west where Sapporo is. We left early Saturday morning quite early, as in, i got up before the sun did - can you believe it! We left the house at about 6AM.
it would have taken about 4 hours from my side of hokkaido to the other side (where we stayed the night) but we stopped so many times so we didnt get to the hotel until about 4 oclock that afternoon.
During the car trip i listened to music, slept, read some manga, and did some kanji practice to pass the time.
What we did was, first me, swiss guy, host mum and host dad bought a hokkaido travel book for the weekend. And inside is a page for each town where you stamp it to say youve been to that town. Eg, we stopped in so many different towns on saturday and sunday, and every time we got out of the car, walked inside of the tourism building, and got that towns stamp and put it in our each of our books. Then later on we can look through the book and say that we have visited that town. They were only small towns so basically the only building there WAS the tourism buildings. We visited at least 10 during the trip.
While i was listening to music and half asleep in the car, my parents told me that they got a bit lost, even though they have a navigator in the car. I could definately tell we were lost as we drove through a tunnel, then when we came out, there was snow everywhere on the road, almost like a blizzard. i realised they had started to drive north, rather than east, it was pretty funny.
Saturday lunch time we stopped in at my host dads friends house/diner for a big feed! It is actually their house, but it was built into a restaurant for people and they run it everyday as their own business. The food was sooo good we ate so much! i forgot to take a picture but just imagine a table full of different japanese meals. I was distracted by how nice it all was i ended up eating too much and got SO full! but it was worth it. They told my host parents we didnt have to pay for it because they were friends so that was nice. After talking with them for over an hour, we got back in the car and continued driving.
Along the way we saw so many Japanese style trees and there were mountains and hills everywhere! It was really nice scenery.
Saturday afternoon we arrived at a place called Abashiri. It is know for its prison which has been turned into a museum and it is really popular! There were so many people there, it was interesting.
After we checked out the museum we walked down the area where prisoners were kept in their cells, like the REAL part. it was kind of creepy and probably haunted at night time.
After we left we drove past the REAL prison (the first part was just a museum) and i wanted to see if we could get in. So me and my host mum walked over a bridge (just like stereotypes, the prison was in the middle of a lake, so if they wanted to break free they would have to swim a long way) but anyway we walked across the bridge and went to the front gate, where i could see the courtyard, but sadly no prisoners......we werent allowed in, which is a pity because i wanted a photo with the prisoners hahaha but atleast i got to visit it.
After that we drove to the place where we were staying at, which was a Japanese style inn. Very traditional, it was fun. Hopefully these photos can show you what it was like......
The food was SO nice, ive grown a liking to japanese food. This is how much we ate for dinner>>
Breakfast was also fairly big, and straight after we ate, we packed up and left at about 9 in the morning for the second part of the trip. We drove down the south side, eventually getting back to sapporo later that night. (We actually got back at around 11PM!!)
We first stopped at a wharf on the way home where there were people feeding all different kinds of sea birds flying everywhere around us!!
I quickly got some pictures then ran back into the car with a fear of getting bird faeces on my clothes...
We kept driving then stopped at a really beautiful lake, with snowy mountains in the background. Me and my host mum were attempting to skim stones across the water. It was a really good view!
Then we drove and stopped at a 'Ainu' hut. For those of you who dont know (probably all of you), Ainu are like, the indigenous people of Hokkaido (only hokkaido though, not any other part of japan). Its like Australia has Aborigines, Hokkaido have Ainu people, with their own language that they spoke. Only very few people know the Ainu language now as it isn't being taught to anyone and they are slowly dieing out, so not much is left of it. The history is really interesting though. This is a photo of it >>
I walked inside and their was bonfire kind of thing lit in the middle of the hut, with traditional clothing/accessories/weapons/tools/etc being displayed on the walls. I was lucky enough to be dressed in traditional Ainu wear and got a photo! >>
IT consisted of robes, a sash, a sword (you cant see it in the photo) and some straw design on my head. hahaha
Before i left i bought an Ainu band to wear around my wrist, looks pretty cool.
During the afternoon, we visited a beach and a national park.
OH! i saw deers for the first time! As we were driving around hokkaido, when we went through the mountains, which were basically right next to the road, there were deers grazing around the place, it was awesome as!! Me and my host mum saw a big hard of them, so we got out to take a photo, but they saw us and ran like into the woods.....damn. But when it got to night time (as i said before we got home at about 11 oclock sunday night) they were right next to the road, i was scared one would stupidly jump out in front of the car, but they didnt.
I was SO tired when we finally made it back home i pretty much went to sleep straight away.
AND THAT WAS MY TRIP!
A few other things, it was the swiss guys birthday on monday so that night we had a big dinner party. My host mums friend came over and they got drunk together. The swiss guy and my host dad went to bed, but me, host mum and her friend stayed up til about 2 oclock tuesday morning talking/laughing. I enjoyed it.
I go back to school tomorrow as ive been on a week long holiday since Thursday last week. AND Saturday morning i have to get up early as im going to TOKYO!!!! Im going to Disney Land so i cant wait!!!! then coming back monday, meaning i wont be at school that day. I will have to make a post about tokyo next week.
BYE!!!!
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