Very kind owner of mimatsuso ryokan. Took all our luggage up, let us use a second room as a ‘tea room’ and drove us to the train station when we checked out the next day, gave T a little gift bag with some lollies and origami inside !! I thoroughly recommend staying here if you can handle some old school lodging (which is actually their own home in the back too) and know some japanese language and etiquette too. (The other two minshuku/ryokan places we stayed gave me horrible hayfever when ever we returned to the room at the end of the day but mimatsuso didn’t.
T saw some smoked eggs in the tourist info centre – we got a couple to try – definitely going to try making them on the kamado back home!!
Asahikawa city museum. Only a single A4 sheet of English info. (I reckon next trip in a few years time I might not need English handouts- will still learn Japanese as a hobby) I could pick out fragments of sentences so we got an idea at least of the content. Had some early jomon items through to early ainu of the area and into early turn of the century… one thing we hadn’t seen before is large stone circles located in about 8 locations in hokkaido – one is located just around the bay from Abashiri – may never know if it’s even open to the public.
Asahikawa yuki Matsue –
Ultraman sponsored possibly…There were posters, people offering pics taken with ultraman, and about half a dozen adverts before the protection mapping… Which itself was a short Ultraman vid – but also combined live actors in ultraman and kaiju outfits running round on the stage and when they transform into their giant size they jump behind a screen and then get animated on the snow screen. All in all I think the Abashiri protection mapping was more enjoyable (first one we’d seen so prolly seems more special) but the Asahikawa had it’s moments.
BUT… After that there was fire works… I’d been look each trip for some winter fireworks (they are generally a summer festivals thing) but they were all to hard too get to or we just couldn’t fit them in… Was surprised when we started hearing about fire works from the tourist info centre and over hearing people in the food hall at the festival
Japan travels 