Kushiro

Long drive today to Kushiro not helped by the poor weather. It rained and was cloudy all day. We missed the wetlands train by a few minutes, but we were only half-heartedly rushing for it anyway.

We made the tour of the wetlands by car instead. The Hosooka Viewpoint gave an expansive view of the meandering Kushiro river below us. This panorama was stitched from 6 photos, click for larger image.

Lunch was at Washo market, a non-descript building housing a wet market of about 80 stalls selling fruits, vegetables, seafood and other produce. The reason for the visit wasn’t because it is one of the three largest seafood markets in Hokkaido, it was to sample the katte-don, or “make-your-own” chirashi. It was simple. Buy your rice from one of the many stalls, picking the appropriate size. It’s sold by weight so no issue about scrimping. Next, go to one (or several) of the many seafood stalls and select the various items you want on your rice. That’s it. As was our focus on this trip, ebi, salmon roe and uni formed the main selection. Two chirashi plus a plate of uni came to ¥5,050.

The next stop was the Tancho Reserve that is home to a flock of red-capped cranes, Japan’s national bird. From pictures we thought it was an open nature reserve and were a little surprised to be confronted with high wired cages each housing a crane family. Strange. It could be that most of the cranes had migrated elsewhere, since they were only supposed to be on site during the winter. The theory that the ones remaining were in captivity was quickly debunked when a couple of them flew out of the cages and starting hanging out on the footpath. Clearly if they wanted to fly away they could, and these few chose to stay. It would still have been nice to see them in their natural habitat but it was also reassuring to know that they weren’t prisoners. They were tame though, we walked past them very close and they weren’t bothered.

We had coffee and ice cream at the small (rather deserted) souvenir shop off to one side of the carpark. The service we received was as usual impeccable.

There was just enough time to pay a short visit to the Kushiro City Marsh Observatory, another lookout to the wetlands.

Guess what? Our third beautiful dinner and more relaxing soaking in the onsen followed by Olympics. That’s the life.