Japan 4.8: Shiretoko National Park. Godzilla Rock, skinks, and a bear on a cruise.

The cruise to potentially see bears was rescheduled to yesterday.  I woke up early to head for Utoro in the Shiretoko Peninsula.  I still was not sure which hotel I would be staying at.  Either the original or the sister hotel, since they had not responded to my messages.  Upon reaching the hotel, I explained that I didn't know for sure if I was supposed to be there.  They said that I would be staying at the original booking.  Then, they brought out a man from the back, who spoke Japanese to me.  I explained that I only knew a little Japanese and the woman said that that guy was responsible for the web management was apologizing.  Ok... That was a strange way to acknowledge the mistake.

I went to have ramen at a local place.  I was given an English menu when they saw that I was using an app to translate their menu.  When the man came to take my order, I ordered vegetable ramen.  He asked me what type of ramen.  Most of the places that I had been to specialized in just one ramen.  I asked what his favorite was.  He said shio(salt).  I said that I would have that.  It was unbelievably good.

I parked down the road, right next to the cruise agency, and decided to walk around since I had an hour to spare.  My saved spots on the map included Godzilla Rock.  I took a wide angle picture, not see what made the rock special, and moved on.  Around the corner is Oronko Rock.  This had a climbable path to the top, which I took.  Upon reaching the top, there was a rather large circular path.  I took photos of the town.

Unfortunately, I somehow didn't realize that the pictures of the rock and the view of the town were never transferred to my computer.  When I finally realized that I had been missing the pictures, it was too late.  I already had cleared my camera.

Along the top pathway I noticed a lizard.  I tried to stop, but it scurried away.  I walked around slowly, looking down for more.  I was able to get photos of a few.  When I tried to look up Japanese lizard on Google, I came across the Japanese five-lined skink.  This seems to match with what I saw. Luckily these pictures were taken with my other camera.



After the descent, I saw why the previous rock was named after Godzilla.



The cruise was next and I was ushered in a line to the docks.  Our boat was mostly indoors, but I was put in the back two rows, which were actually outdoors, so that I would be able to take pictures.



We saw one eagle with its back to us.



We saw a few waterfalls.



Once we had reached the farthest area of the cruise, people began to stand up.  I couldn't tell what they were looking at.  Of course, I had no idea what the person on the loudspeaker had been saying.  One woman was kind enough to point out the black dot on the beach.  Not only was it ridiculously far away, but the boat was rocking tremendously.  I was only able to scrape out three mediocre pictures of the bear from the encounter.  Next time I will have to up the shutter speed to compensate for such rocking.  The bear had actually gone into the water at one point and stared at us.



Back at the docks, I took some time to watch the birds.