北海道自転車旅行：7/13 阿寒湖へ

毅軍 got up early this morning and came to the inn to have breakfast with us. Having great bread and coffee in a Japanese style room really is a great experience.

Today's destination is Lake Akan national park (阿寒湖), another of the most famous tourist spots of Hokkaido, mainly because of the ball shaped seaweed (marimo/マリモ) living in the lake. The road to Lake Akan is another whole day through farms and hills, places with very little people. Yet, there was no less of road side driving safety promotions.

Wow, how did they got the idea of that tire man?

We made significant progress today because 毅軍 went out full power on jokes, totally imitating the way one of our friends back in Taiwan (邦尼) guided club ride trips. Some how, imitating the pace, language and even upright riding posture of that friend made the girls laugh all the way along, while riding at a much faster pace without realizing. すげええ Some people really could make people laugh, something I was never good at.

Halfway, a police officer stopped us and some cars ahead of us, and guided us to a wide parking lot next to the road. At first it seamed like some kind of traffic control for road construction. Yet, after we stopped, a whole group of grade school kids guided by their teachers, lined up next to us, and shouted together: "We are from the local elementary school, we would like to present you a gift for a traffic safety campaign!" Bowed, and then a kid came over to each of us (one on one) and presented us the gift, full of stuff that reminds us not to speed and stuff. The girl who was responsible for giving me my gift seemed to be slowest, and very shy, stammering with her words under encouragement from a teacher (do I seem that frightening?). She was soooooo cute! One of the teachers had a short chat with 毅軍 (again, because he spoke the best Japanese), asking where are we from and where we are going. Finally, we waved good bye, and left, the kids shouting "take care (気をつけで)!" To bad I was too stunned by this unsuspected presentation that I forgot to pull out my camera before we left.

Actually, almost everyone we meet in Japan gave us a warm "take care (気をつけで)!" Making us feel all cozy inside even though they are strangers. I really like how they care about each other in Hokkaido, like every one are friends.

We stopped later shortly to peek in the package: several little packs of tissue paper with safety promotions printed on, a wooden badge with the words "亀亀運動実施中 (turtle turtle campaign in effect?)" with a turtle drawn on it, kind of meaning that driving slowly like a turtle would be safe. Also several hand out leaflets and a little craft hand made of paper and toothpicks also wishing us safety on the road.


We had lunch at Kamiashioro (上足寄), kind of the only store we could find on the road today. Well this tiny store seemed to be the center of this little farming area. It the local grocery store, post office, police station, and even gas station, all in one. Talk about a place with not much customers, things there were extremely expensive, as the market was too small for such a rural place. Well, we bought some food and cooked noodles there (well, as far from the gas pump area of course).

It was getting cooler and cloudy with a drop or two of rain in the afternoon as we read toward Lake Akan. We passed several farms along side the road, it was all grass, hay, and cows.



Then we started climbing the hills surrounding Lake Akan.

The lake was formed by collecting rain water in a valley between several volcanoes.


Going into the volcano area, the surrounding plant life started to change. We were especially fascinated by these pink tipped leaves.

I choose to ride in the last today, to give 毅軍 a chance to ride in his own speed. As we started climb again, I started to use the ride and rest trick again to ride at a comfortable speed and also stay behind the girls, we were really enjoying the scenery at a slower pace. Suddenly, I realized that I was resting for like 20 minutes, and the girls in front were not moving.

Wondering what made them stop, I rode ahead to join in where they were staring at...

Woo, another fox, this time resting right next to the road, so close. The fur didn't seem as healthy and beautiful as the two I saw on Daisetsuzan (大雪山), though. Candy said that she saw a poster in some place that said wild fox that get to eat road side tourist feed foods tend to have unhealthy fur, and this one seems to be waiting for some one to feed it.

But still, it's so cute we can't stop pressing the shutter button...

毅軍 was waiting for us at the top of a hill that seems to be the climax before entering the valley. Close by, there was a sign pointing to a dirt road leading away from the main route into the forest that was labeled waterfall. I forgot the name of the waterfall, but anyway, I like off road trails, and off we went!


Sure, road tires were much more slippery on dirt roads, but it could be managed.

This sign greeted us at the end of the trail:

Basically it read: "Incidents of crow robbing stuff from car windows are frequent in this area. Please take all valuables with you before leaving the car. Also, please don't harm the trees!"

Well, let's see.. My valuables are in my backpack, and what's left on my bike is banana peal that I couldn't find a trashcan to throw away. I left the banana peal on my bike in hope that the crow would "steal".

A little route down into the valley of the river brought us to the waterfall.

Well, there goes my shutter happy finger again...

After we left the waterfall, we were going downhill, again into a lake valley; and again meet with strong fog, cool wind, and rain drops. Clearly, this valley, like the others we saw days before, was a basin of collected moisture. We once again meet what we escaped Daisetsuzan for. I told my friends that I would not want to see another lake-in-the-valley on this trip again. 毅軍 said that Lake Akan (阿寒湖) sure is as cold as the name suggested (the "kan" in the name means freezing cold).As so we once again arived at the Lake side shivering, wet and hungry. Well the good part is that the rain stopped when we arrived. All wet and cold again, this time all four of us agreed to stay at a bed&breakfast (although we choose to stay only, no meal option). I forgot the name of the place, but I don't want to remember. We choose it because it is cheep and also serves ramen, a convenient way to get rid of dinner. Yet as we would later find out, after we paid, the host didn't treat us well. How should I say it, he sort of treated us as "stupid tourists who are only sources of money". The time we were allowed to use the bath room is ridiculously short (an hour at a specified time for all 4 of us), that annoying look on his face were as if we were pests, and all questions were answered brief and unwillingly, with no manners. Well, duh, the only smile we saw was right before we agreed to stay and pay the fee.


This is a cute little bus stop for the tour bus of Lake Akan. The place we stayed at was the white building to the right of the picture. I am telling all readers to AVOID that place if you want a good experience. And this is the only place in Hokkaido that I would advise this strongly to avoid. For your info, the taste of the ramen sold there was also under par.

Lake Akan is a bustling tourist attraction full of, well, what else? Tourists and shops. We called it the "heaven of gifts of souvenirs", because the sheer number of the shops, and the quality of the crafts. They're mostly craft shops of the Hokkaido aborigines, the "Ainu", who are very good at wood crafts. The crafts, although high in price, was well worth it because of the quality. They also had "Ainu style ramen", but the price was more then double that of the average price in Hokkaido, so we were scared out of the store. Something we took as "scary", was that the store keepers were shouting out to tourists that they had a free service of etching on words on the wood crafts if we buy them, and when they saw us, they immediately switched to shouting in Chinese! Seems like there were so much Taiwanese tourists here that the Ainu people had learned our language (we could recognize it as the Taiwanese accent); farther more, there were even price tags in traditional Chinese. We felt like there was no longer the privacy that we have grown used to of talking in a language that other don't understand. Well, 毅軍 said may be they couldn't understand the Taiwanese dialect, and walked into a store and shouted out loud: "黑店！黑店！" (Black store, which means a store that rips off customers.) Well, sure enough no one even turned to look. But boy are we laughing!

Later in the night we realized that local "Lawson convenient store" was selling fried chicken and oolong noodles for half the average price. We immediately regretted having the B&B's crappy ramen for dinner and decided to have oolong for lunch the next day.

July 12th 糠平湖 << | >> July 14 阿寒湖