北海道自転車旅行：Jul 8 美瑛から、富良野へ

It was a very great morning, as we woke up right in the scenic hills of the quilt roads.

Farms Chiyoda as it is, there is a lot of barn animals.

Following a tourist map, we continued along "quilt road" (拼布の路), to the next main attraction: Takushinkan (photo gallery, 拓真館), which seems to be a memorial hall of something we don't know yet. Well, we'll see. The scenary it self is the main point of being here, and so there goes my shutter happy finger...

We could even see our future destination: Daisetsuzan (大雪山) far away.

Grass, flowers, trees, hay, hills, bright blue sky, white clouds, no matter where you point your camera, any picture would look like a great postcard.



Half way, we meet this real cool Japanese dude who is also on his bike. He seems to have twice the luggage of any of us, with huge packs, many ropes, even an umbrella,
some Lavander sticking out of the back of the bike, a hat made of hay, a very large smile, and a wooden board saying "Around Japan!" (日本一周).

And more hay rolls.


This is the colorful quilt-like part.


Real fun to take photos through the flowers, anyone would seem romantic like that :)

I got a cone of lavender ice cream (ラバンーダ　ソフトクリーム) in a road side souvenir shop that is full of lavender related gifts. Interestingly, when paying for it, I dumped all of my coins out and found it about 10 yen short; as I was about to pull out a 1000 yen bill for this, the clark stopped me and kept saying that I don't have to. Confused, I continued pulling out my bill, and she said "サービスです！" (in Japanese, they say "service" to mean free, or discount), how kind, not wanting the few yen short of the price. A small act, yet lets tourists feel friendly and have a nice impression of Japan. I later saw posters promoting "smiles of everyone" as the best advertisement of Hokkaido's tourism, a very interesting and nice quirk of traveling in Japan.


And we got to Takushinkan (拓真館), just the same time as a whole bus of, what else? Taiwanese tourists. Cool. There were elder people asking us in Taiwanese: "卡打車都位來ㄟ？(where did your bike come from?)", "騎到這ㄍ真厲害咧... (what a feat to ride all the way here...)"

Takushinkan is a memorial photo gallery of a Japanese father & son photographer who loves to take photos of all seasons of Biei. On display includes their photos, and gear (the huge Hasselblad film camera themselves are very astonishing). Although admission free, they sale photo books of the displayed works and also post cards and calenders. As poor student travelers we didn't buy any, yet we witnessed the high buying power of Taiwanese elder tourists.

Outside Takushinkan, is a Lavender garden, sort of giving us a sample of what to expect tomorrow at Furano (富良野).




On the road back to Biei town, we took yet a 3rd scenic route through the hills.

Finally I caught one of the trains on photo, yet it's a 2 car one, not the interesting single car.



Despite the ups and downs in the hills, the scenery just makes you forget how tiring the hill climbing is.


Back at the train station, we had lunch at restaurant whose name I forgot. What I did remember is: 1)The funny menu had Chinese on it, yet seemed to be the translation work of Chinese mainlanders, thus chicken & egg rice bowls (親子丼) turns into "Bird rice bowls" （鳥飯）or something like that, people who understand Chinese would understand the difference between the Taiwanese Chinese language and Mainland Chinese; 2)It is overpriced, service very slow, and doesn't taste good.

Alright, ripped off at lunch. Yet, next I got a real great deal on suntan lotion. There was a newly opened "Tsuruha (ツルハ)" chain drug store in town, which is holding a grand opening sale. A heavily discounted bottle of suntan lotion got me a free box of tissue paper (which is so big that it would serve us through out the rest of our trip), and a whole tank of batteries for me to grab. So matter how much I could grab in a handful, it's mine; and the clark would add his own other handful to my bag, shouting out loud: "this is "service"!!" (サービスでーす！) There was so much tissue paper and batteries (which amounts to a battery change's amount of everyone's bike lights and a little more) that we needed a little time just to pack it.

Next we rode to the east side of Biei (the "quilt road" that we spent our morning wa the west side), with less hills, flatter plains, and a different feel.







Last we rode back to town to meet with Candy, and after a special birthday party for 美聿, we set off for Naka Furano (the middle of Furano, 中富良野).

And we are back on route 237, "Flower-men's street" (花人街道).
There are many road side stands selling melons (メロン, they call them web melons because of the outer texture, yet I'd say it's really a variant of the Honeydew that we all know). We know that melons are a major produce of the Furano area, yet the price was just too high (it's also the same with corn, which is also selling everywhere).


We encountered this real weird "trick art" art museum (トリックアート美術館). Do you believe all the "doors", "windows", "arcs", and even the "David statue" are all realistically painted on white walls?

We next arrived at the tiny Nakafurano train station. We originally planned to take the bus the next day on to an Onsen (hotsprings bath place, 温泉) on Daisetsuzan (大雪山) that our previous home stay host, Ryan, strongly recommended. Yet a look on the bus stop here reveled too scarce buses and bad times, forcing us to give up our first attempt onto Daisetsuzan. We went to this "Sunrise park auto camping site" (日の出公園オートキャンプ場) at Nakafurano, which was famous for it's very nice facilities and "camping among Lavender gardens". Okey, facilities weren't apparent, Lavender was on the other side of the hill (only the people who chose to camp on top of the hill gets close to Lavender), and worse of all, at 500 yen per person, and additional charge for bath, we were amazed that camping could be more expensive then rider houses.

Mad at the price, we went to find the nearest rider house. Well, it's a wooden shack with broken windows and flies flying around, in a yard that looks like a garbage dump, complete with fiercely barking dogs (oh well, it's free...). Again, with girls in the group, this rider house was out of the question. I suggest riding for another 5~10 km to a very nice rider house recommended on the web: "Fukuda Melon" (フクダメロン), which is said to have free melon eating contests.


Well, with the sun going downhill, no one else except me, this cycling freak, was enthusiastic to another 5~10 km. And one of us (毅軍) was slightly sick. So it was decided that I ride as fast as I could, back to the camping place to register (for fear of the counter closing), and the others to the near by supermarket for dinner.


Expensive as it seams, the "Sunrise park auto camping site" (日の出公園オートキャンプ場) facilities were real good, with a indoor conference room, a sells booth, hot water for instant noodles, free to use microwave, coin laundry, and even a coin shower (100 yen for 10 minutes of continuous shower water that you could pause when applying soap, much more then enough for a shower). Management is also very good, everything in good condition. Only down side to good management is having guards walking around checking everyone's tents for the "proof of paied fee". With all that, I think it justifies the price.

July 7th: 美瑛 << | >> July 9th: 富良野