I arrived in Sapporo just in time to take the final train into the city and didn't reach my hotel until nearly midnight. I planned for three days in Sapporo to rest and recuperate from the cruise, long travel, and time change. Besides, there just isn't much in Sapporo that interested me.
On my first day, after sleeping well into the afternoon, I decided to go straight to a ramen restaurant. Reviews had said that the machine, where you ordered from, had English translations. This was not the case. I ordered ramen itself, which conveniently had a picture. Once I sat down and someone came over to me, I asked them in Japanese where the gyoza was. They directed me to the button that corresponded to gyoza on the machine.
Then, I took a walk around town. I visited the Sapporo Clock Tower, which was nothing special. I walked through Odori Park, which is always shown online when you do a search for the city. To the side was the Sapporo TV tower.
As usual, there were some bizarre advertisements, such as this one, with stuffed animals of Japanese people.
My last stop of the day was to the Tanukikoji arcade mall, to quickly walk through and scout out the location of a well rated yakisoba restaurant for the following day.
The following day, I went to the yakisoba restaurant for lunch. Although I had found the exterior that matched the picture showed online, I had been unaware that once inside, there were about 10 very small barlike restaurants. The one I was looking for was all the way in the back. The food was good.
Back at the hotel, I did the laundry and read a pseudo horror book called Penpal all the way through. It was decent.
The next day I walked across the street and picked up my rental car. There will no more trains for me on this trip, as Hokkaido is much more rural and undeveloped. Upon picking up the car, I realized that now I have driven on all four major islands of Japan. Japanese driving is very relaxed, with pretty slow speed limits. Once outside of Sapporo, it was a relaxing two and a half hour drive to my next destination, just outside of a town called Furano.
Just five minutes before reaching my hotel, I stopped at a ramen restaurant that I had mapped out beforehand. I was the only customer at the time. They warned me that the ramen was a little spicy, but it was fantastic. As I was paying, the woman asked me where I was from. After responding, she told me that she liked the band KISS, and mimed the guitar.
Here I have stayed in a small Japanese bed and breakfast hotel, without the breakfast. I have a small room and shared bathrooms. The location has been perfect for what I wanted to see. After arriving on my first day, I went to the Tomita Farm, widely regarded as having beautiful, multicolored fields. At first I was a bit confused, because although there were many people directing traffic into the various parking lots, but there was no sign for paying for parking or entering the grounds. I walked around for about an hour, viewing the fields, and finished by getting a soft serve lavender flavor waffle cone, that they were offering in multiple places throughout the farm. It tasted just as it smelled, like lavender.
The next day, I got up early and left to visit the rest of my chosen destinations. Rain was scheduled for mid afternoon. The weather has been mostly cloudy since reaching Furano. The first stop was to the Shirahige waterfall, known for its very light blue water. The waterfall was unexpectedly viewed from a bridge, well below and to the right. I was not very prepared for this, since my tripod only goes up so high. I had to angle the camera down at quite an angle, and just barely made it clear of the railing.
Just five minutes up the road was more blue water, at the appropriately named Shirogane Blue Pond. For my last shot, I chose to slide down some concrete blocks, so I could get down to the dirt and take a wide angled picture. I did this by literally sitting down and sliding. After taking the picture, I turned around, a family, in English, asked if I needed help back up. I pointed out that there were some dirt patches in the blocks to the side that I planned to use to get back up, which I indeed used to that effect. One of their party tried to go halfway down and then got nervous and turned around. Weird. It was only a few feet.
After this, I decided to make a few short stops at potential areas of interest. The first one, Hokusei no oka Observatory Park had an observatory that you could climb atop, in order to see the surrounding fields. This spot was for sure the most disappointing, as none of the views offered anything of interest.
A few minutes away was the Shine no Oka Observatory park, which was just a higher point of land that offered views of farms. It had a small shop set up, selling drinks and ice cream. The views were decent. I ended up speaking to a fellow camera owner about cameras and he told me of his trips to the states, where he went to North Carolina and Disney in Florida.
The last stop of the day was to the Shikisai no Oka farm. This was the first place that charged admission, by way of a less than five dollar parking fee. It was very busy, with some shops out front and even advertised for an area with alpacas. I never saw them. They offered tram rides and even rented little vehicles for people to drive around in. Instead, I went toward the flower fields on foot.
After taking my first set of pictures, I felt a small bite of a fly. I shooed it away. I then sat down to take more pictures and I noticed that it landed on my pants.
The fields here were the highlight of this town. They were absolutely beautiful and quite varied.
As I was walking back to my car, the sun came out and it was blistering. Luckily, I had put on sun block before I left the hotel. I drove back to the ramen shop, which was closed, so I located another one and went there. It was exquisite. I then returned home and it began to rain.
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