Jo Blogs in Hokkaido 2021

From the ferry in Hakodate, we still had a long drive up to Yoichi where we had booked an Airbnb for a couple of nights. We messaged our hosts to let them know we would be a little late, then settled into the journey - without audio accompaniament as our phone batteries were running quite low. We had been listening to Mythos by Stephen Fry - read by Stephen Fry himself. We re-told our own old travel stories instead "Remember when we were in Chile...." We made it to the comfortable and modern apartment in our mud-splattered car, cooked a simple homemade dinner then had a bath and an early night. The next day, after washing the car, we headed to the Shakotan peninsula - specifically to Cape Kamui and Shakotan cape. We enjoyed a day of fantastic views, lovely hikes and fresh seafood including the local speciality, sea urchin. We tried to visit the Nikka distillery in Yoichi, but unfortunately, it had suspended tours due to COVID-19. We tried some local wines in town instead...

After leaving Lake Towada (chilly, raining), we drove through the Towada-Hachimantai national park. It was raining heavily and the road was poor, although we did pass through an impressive gorge. There were a lot of ill-kitted out people walking along the river path mostly on the road, so we think must be 'must do' tourist attraction of some sort... we powered on up through the axe handle of this far-flung peninsula in Aomori.  We'd booked a nice hotel in Mutsu, but had time to stop at a tourist attraction before checking in. We chose to visit Osore-zan bodai-ji temple . It is one of Japan's most sacred sites and sits on the shores of a stinky sulphurous crater lake in the mountains. We found the place quite creepy, indeed it apparently has the atmosphere of the afterlife. After this detour, we checked into our rather lovely hotel (the  Mutsu Grand Hotel ) and had a wonderful relaxing onsen and an early dinner in the French restaurant.  We were up and on our way again b...

Next stop was Lake Towada in Aomori prefecture - a beautiful and peaceful crater late high in the mountains. We couldn't find any Airbnbs on Lake Towada, so booked a nice onsen hotel with a lavish dinner included! The next day, we walked around the spookily quiet, grey lake, ate apple pie before making our way to our next destination, Mutsu.    

We expected Ichinoseki to simply be somewhere to sleep and break up our journey, but we found out in the local tourist centre that there was so much to see, so we took a few detours before we wound our way up to Lake Towada in Aomori (stop 3). Geibikei Gorge Hiraizumi temples, gardens and archaeological sites (World Heritage site)

We left for our northern adventures on a sticky post-typhoon Chiba day. We planned to drive up to Hokkaido and avoid flying, public transport, and people in general where possible. Apparently, it would take 18 hours to drive to Hokkaido, so we planned to make 4 overnight stops and work our way gradually up. First stop: the Ura-Bandai highlands in Fukushima. We stayed in a basic Airbnb  for the night near the lakes and checked out fairly early the next morning. The lakes (Akimoto, Onigawa and Hibara) were hauntingly beautiful in the rain, but we didn't do any walking there as (1) it really was too damp, (2) there didn't appear to be any trails around the lake, and (3) the hike we found on the AllTrails app had the starting point of a spa town called Tsuchiyu Onsen that had literally no parking spots anywhere.  We weren't very taken with Tsuchiyu Onsen town, so went to the second stop-off point on our journey to Iwate, the cheesy sounding 'Village of Four Seasons' (...