{"id":603,"date":"2008-02-18T14:25:34","date_gmt":"2008-02-19T00:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studionewmedia.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/18\/stay-out-of-the-moors\/"},"modified":"2008-02-18T14:25:34","modified_gmt":"2008-02-19T00:25:34","slug":"stay-out-of-the-moors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/02\/18\/stay-out-of-the-moors\/","title":{"rendered":"Stay out of the Moors…"},"content":{"rendered":"

In anticipation of some B\/C work in Niseko, we went to Takino Suzuran park in Southeast Sapporo on Saturday\u00c2\u00a0to try out snowshoeing.\u00c2\u00a0 We caught the subway down to Makomanai and got on the same bus line that heads to the Geijitsu no Mori<\/em> (art\/sculpture garden).\u00c2\u00a0 Takino is a Natonal-Government-run park offering various activities year-round.\u00c2\u00a0 In winter there are XC ski trails, a tiny one-lift ski\/board slope, a tube\/sled park, and snowshoe trails.\u00c2\u00a0 The snow as coming down pretty heavy in the morning.\u00c2\u00a0 There was easily 10-15cm of unsettled fall overnight.\u00c2\u00a0 The snowshoe and poles were free.\u00c2\u00a0 They had pretty nice hardware – Tubbs shoes and BD poles!<\/p>\n

The course was reasonable well marked with signs, but after all the snowfall during the week when few visitors were at the park, the line was not obvious.\u00c2\u00a0 The girl at the rental counter said that the\u00c2\u00a0snowshoe area\u00c2\u00a0was “open”, so we could\u00c2\u00a0really\u00c2\u00a0go off-trail wherever we\u00c2\u00a0wanted and it was OK.\u00c2\u00a0 The course went out around the sled park to an observation tower, then back past the astronomical observatory.\u00c2\u00a0 The round trip took a little over an hour – not sure how far it was.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0I’m sure there are some secret snowshoeing techniques, but the key thing I learned was to not step on the tail of of your front shoe.\u00c2\u00a0 That’ll put you on the ground really fast.\u00c2\u00a0 The pole straps over the gloves make a quick transition to taking out the camera challenging.\u00c2\u00a0 Uphill without heel elevators is also challenging.\u00c2\u00a0 The overall\u00c2\u00a0effort isn’t too bad – I didn’t really have any aches and pains after the hour (the lighter the shoes the better?) – not sure how this changes if the snow isn’t untracked powder…<\/p>\n

On Sunday, we caught a long-haul highway bus from Sapporo out to Tokachigawa onsen in East-central Hokkaido.\u00c2\u00a0 The trip took around 5 hours.\u00c2\u00a0 The bus course ran out on a toll road, then local highways, then back onto a toll road, roughly paralleling the train line that runs between Sapporo and Obihiro.\u00c2\u00a0 The toll road is currently under construction and\u00c2\u00a0will eventually run all the way through.\u00c2\u00a0 The Tokachi plain is a vast agricultural area.\u00c2\u00a0 The city had farm equipment dealers from almost every domestic and foreign manufacturer.\u00c2\u00a0 There is a sugar refinery, so at least one of the products is sugar beets.\u00c2\u00a0 The altitude isn’t really high like the area around Furano (65m if I believe my watch), so conditions were warm and spring-like.\u00c2\u00a0 Although not abundant in snowfall, it is supposedly cold and windy (Tokachi<\/em> in the original Ainu language meant “Ten Winds”).\u00c2\u00a0 I can attest to the windy part.\u00c2\u00a0 It didn’t appear that there had been any significant snowfall for a month or so.\u00c2\u00a0 All the remaining snow was windpacked into those layered patterns, or melted into exaggerated points.\u00c2\u00a0 It did get cold enough at night to frost windshields and freeze puddles though, but during the day it was above zero centigrade.<\/p>\n

After checking into the hotel, we went down to the riverside to see the famous hakucho<\/em> (white geese? – didn’t look like swans).\u00c2\u00a0 There were these and various migratory ducks like Mallards, brown-headed pintails, and some weird black duck that would go submarine and swim underwater.\u00c2\u00a0 The visit to the windy riverbank demanded a visit to the onsen afterwards.\u00c2\u00a0 The entry was crowded with slippers, so I figured it would be a full-house of naked men, but once inside, it didn’t appear that crowded at all.\u00c2\u00a0 The water at this onsen isn’t chemically rich, but it percolates up through a subterrranean layer of decayed, peaty mvegetable matter that the local onsen association has dubbed “mool” <\/em>(probably “moor” if you take into account romanaization issues).\u00c2\u00a0 The water is dark tea brown and leaves the skin smooth.\u00c2\u00a0 I would assume the peat would affect the water’s\u00c2\u00a0Ph but I’m not sure off the top of my head right now if that would be making it acidic or basic…\u00c2\u00a0 The rotenburo <\/em>was around 43C when I got in, but after about 30-minutes, came down to a more survivable 39C.\u00c2\u00a0 The view was out over the river and the plain and distant Hidaka mountains.<\/p>\n

Dinner was teishoku\u00c2\u00a0<\/em> highlighted with a local beef sukiyaki <\/em>and tempura<\/em> made from local ingredients, including some kind of fresh-water fish.\u00c2\u00a0 I got a Tokachi Beer “Mool Onsen Beer” brewed with some of that peaty water.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a good, slightly hoppy lager.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know how the moor water affected the taste in any way.\u00c2\u00a0 The beer did a good job of knocking me out, so I didn’ have a chance to walk up the street in the cold wind to see the colorful hallucinatory light display that the town had set up in a fallow field. \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rotenburo was around 42C in the morning around sunrise, but it didn’t seem that hot.\u00c2\u00a0 Breakfast\u00c2\u00a0was the normal buffet with a mix of Western and traditional fare.\u00c2\u00a0 I noticed at breakfast that some of the guests were speaking Chinese – I’m guessing they were from Taiwan or HK, but what do I know?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s pretty far into the boondocks of Hokkaido for them to come!\u00c2\u00a0 I wonder if there is some aggressive marketing campaign by the Hokkaido tourism association to get people out into the far reaches.\u00c2\u00a0 I can understand when there were lots of foreigners out in Shiretoko, but this is really smack-dab in the middle of nowhere.<\/p>\n

We caught a local bus back into town and went exploring until lunchtime.\u00c2\u00a0 We found a gun shop!\u00c2\u00a0 Oki Gun Shop had Czech Sako rifles, Steyr rifles, and SKB JDM shotguns.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the first gun shop I’ve seen in Japan.\u00c2\u00a0 Come to think of it, there were some hunters with scoped rifles getting out of a SWB 70-series TLC\u00c2\u00a0on the roadside between Yubari and Tomamu.\u00c2\u00a0 It took a bit of walking to find a particular famous restaurant for lunch, but after all the effort, I was ready to eat.\u00c2\u00a0 We had buta-don<\/em> (charcoal-broiled pork donburi) at hage-ten<\/em> restaurant.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, hage<\/em> as in “bald”, and ten<\/em> as in “heaven” – don’t look at me, I didn’t do it.\u00c2\u00a0 It was very good. there was a small 4-slice size and a big 6-slice size.\u00c2\u00a0 The 6mm-thick slices of pork were tender and moist.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a Tokachi specialty, but I don’t really know if pig farming is really a local thing.<\/p>\n

I managed to find single bottles of the other 3 varietals of the Tokachi Beer at the grocery level of the giant Nagasakiya department store to the Southwest of the station. All the omiyage stores in the station only had six-packs of Tokachi beer, and that was just too much. I’ll report on those as I drink them. The return bus was a little faster than the outgoing bus – maybe the time of day, or\u00c2\u00a0the weekday traffic.\u00c2\u00a0 I noticed that the electronic speed limit signs were either blank, or displaying a reduced speed based on conditions.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not sure what the maximum speed is – this isn’t theautobahn<\/em>, so there is some upper limit – I just didn’t see it posted.\u00c2\u00a0 The bus driver was ripping it when there were no lit signs, so I’m guessing it is somewhere in the 100-120kph range.\u00c2\u00a0 Traffic off the tollway was stop-an-go all the way\u00c2\u00a0from Oyachi to Odori.\u00c2\u00a0 We stopped at Sapporo Factory\u00c2\u00a0then headed over to find dinner.\u00c2\u00a0 I had a good junsai\u00c2\u00a0ten-zaru soba <\/em>(batter-fried wild spring greens with cold buckwheat noodles) at a rstaurant in the Marui Imai department store.<\/p>\n

Today it’s clear, blue, and sunny. Boo. It’s supposed t obe clear tomorrow too. Boo. I’ll do some board maintenance for this coming weekend, then go do otaku things around town after lunch. I’ll go boarding tomorrow no matter what – even if there is no new fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In anticipation of some B\/C work in Niseko, we went to Takino Suzuran park in Southeast Sapporo on Saturday\u00c2\u00a0to try out snowshoeing.\u00c2\u00a0 We caught the subway down to Makomanai and got on the same bus line that heads to the Geijitsu no Mori (art\/sculpture garden).\u00c2\u00a0 Takino is a Natonal-Government-run park offering various activities year-round.\u00c2\u00a0 In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[7,8,13,18],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJYlx-9J","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}