In hell
Soup curry スープカレー is quite the popular dish in Sapporo 札幌. My wife and I had passed by several restaurants serving the item during our first few days in the city, and all of them seemed to have people waiting in long lines outside in the cold, patiently awaiting their turns to try some. As it turned out, it was a good thing we didn't join any of the queues - our hotel's breakfast buffet included soup curry as a recommended dish to try. I had some on our last morning there. The verdict? A soupy, mildly spicy stew that was pretty good, but difficult to see what all the excitement was about. Then again, I forgot to eat it with rice, an oversight which wouldn't be rectified until almost at the end of our stay in Hokkaidō 北海道:
We awoke on our third morning in the city to a light snowfall...:
...that grew in intensity as we checked out and lugged our bags above ground to Sapporo Station 札幌駅. Sapporo isn't Tōkyō 東京 or Washington, D.C., however, so the few centimeters sticking to the ground had no effect on the transportation system:
Which was good for us, as we had tickets for the
Hokuto 北斗 limited express train, which would take us from Sapporo on a roughly 75-minute ride past fields covered in snow to Noboribetsu Station 登別駅:
Normally on a trip like this both Shu-E and I would carry all our clothing in bags small enough to fit in oversized compartments on airplanes. However, as my wife was planning to spend almost a month in Taiwan seeing family and friends following the conclusion of our Japan jaunt, she brought along a large suitcase instead.
Traveling around Japan with hefty luggage pieces isn't recommended. While trains like the
Hokuto and highway buses have luggage racks or compartments for stowing large bags, ordinary trains and buses don't, and struggling with luggage while getting on and off most forms of public transportation is one sure way not to ingratiate yourself with the locals. There are
delivery services that can transport your baggage from one hotel to the next, but seeing as we were only going to be staying one night outside of Sapporo before returning to the city, it didn't make much sense to use one of these (I've done so in the past, and they're quite convenient!).
Arriving at Noboribetsu Station and seeing the long line of mostly foreign tourists attempting to get onto a very crowded bus with their suitcases for the short ride to the hot springs area (the reason for going to Noboribetsu 登別 in the first place), Shu-E and I made the eminently sensible (and not too expensive decision) to take a taxi to our hotel. After entrusting our bags with the staff (it was too early to check in), we set out to have a look around
Noboribetsu Onsen 登別温泉:
The first order of business was to find somewhere to have lunch. I would end up ordering a "Hokkaido Winter Special":
One of the innumerable great things about Japan is that restaurant items often look exactly, or at least very close to, how they are presented in the menus:
The snow was coming down as we left the restaurant and made our way to hell. "
Hell Valley" 地獄谷, that is,
one of several such places in Japan - a smoking volcanic crater reeking of sulphureous gases and dotted with hissing vents. It was all starkly beautiful in the snowy conditions:
Tessen Pond ("Iron Spring Pond") 鉄泉池 was fenced off, an understandable move considering the water temperature was around 80°C/175°F:
For the record my wife came across this large snowball and didn't accumulate it herself:
The scene behind us in the above photograph:
Leaving
Jigoku-dani and heading back to the center of town:
We detoured to climb up the steps to Yuzawa Shrine 湯澤神社:
By the time we returned to the
Takinoya Bekkan Tamanoyu Ryokan 滝乃屋別館玉乃湯 it was time to complete check-in procedures, and then to have a first look at our room for the night:
Relaxing in our room with a locally-made craft beer (purchased from a shop on our way back from the underworld) before dinnertime:
And what a dinner it was by the time evening rolled around!
This is one of two good reasons why you should splurge (a little, in this case, thanks to current exchange rates) and stay in a
ryokan 旅館 (or a very nice
minshuku 民宿) for at least one night while traveling in Japan.
Out of nothing more than sheer laziness, I've uploaded the menu description to go along with the food porn pics below:
The
other reason for staying at a ryokan, especially one in an
onsen 温泉 town or village, is the opportunity to soak at the end of the day (and sometimes in the mornings, too) in a hot but relaxing pool of water. In Japan this means
sans clothing, but I long ago got over any inhibitions I may have initially had about being naked among strangers. Readers of this blog will note, however, that this isn't the case with Shu-E. And unfortunately for her, our room at the Takinoya Bekkan Tamanoyu didn't have its own bath or shower (only a toilet), meaning she had no choice but to go downstairs after dinner and get
nekkid in the ground-floor women's bath. She would tell me later that she only showered, and didn't actually set foot in the hot spring bath itself.
And as I enjoyed the onsen experience in the men's bath, I gave no thought of all to how my wife was dealing with her bathing-related neuroses. Life was just too good at that moment...
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