Nothing Important Happened Today

Hello,

The title is somewhat misleading today, as we`ve actually seen some nice things, but that`s the title of a really good X-Files episode, which I started to think about today.

Anyhoo, we`re now located in Mashu (Masyu) in Akan National Park, which is nice since yesterday nothing really happened (which I suppose would make the title Nothing Important Happened Yesterday, but that doesn`t really have such a nice edge to it). The only thing we really did yesterday was to sit on different trains. We went from Furano at about 10 am and were going to Abashiri; only it took 6 hours, so when we finally got there, things were about to close up. We rented some bicykles and tried to go to the main attraction, the Prison, which to the Japanese is like Alcatraz is for the Americans, only this prison is still in use. But we got lost on our way and the prison closed at 5, so we headed back to the station and waited there for 2 hours or so to travel here to Mashu (there weren`t any cheap places to sleep at in Abashiri).

We made a good choice though; since the hotel we`re staying at now is really nice. Big comfortable rooms, free bicykles and they even picked us up from the trainstation yesterday evening. We`re thinking if going back to Abashiri tomorrow morning though, as it only takes 2 hours from here, and it would be nice to see the prison. We`ll see how it goes.

Well, I should focus more on the things we`ve done here in Mashu, as that`s really the only thing new that`s happened since our last post. This morning we went on a touristbus that passes all the major sights here, and since the weather`s not all so nice, we decided that was the way to go.

We first "saw" Mashu-ko, a famous lake that once held the worldrecord in waterclarity (35m), but it was so foggy you couldn`t see anything, hardly even the bus that stood some 20 meters away. We then saw (for real this time) Izo-san, another vulcaneous mountain, which was very rich in sulphur (or phosphor, don`t really remember) as you can see in the picture. It had a lot of steam coming up from it too; there were even people selling eggs that were boiled in the steam. They tasted like regular kitchen-boiled eggs, but it was fun to try.

We then went to Kussharo-ko, I believe its name was, a much larger lake (57km around) with volcanically warmed sand around it (though it was so cold in the air you didn`t really feel it. The scalding hot mini-onsens here and there you still felt though). That lake, by the way, has its own version of the Loch Ness monster, called Kusshi (Kesshi, I forget the name). It looked like a blue Nessie (well, the souvenirs of it did, sadly enough we didn`t see it).

After that it was pretty much done, we took this photo of us with two of the other tourists from the bus (they asked us), and since then we`ve only been at our hotel really.

Well, this post was maybe a bit scarce, but it`s still something to read for you die-hard fans out there (just kidding). Anyway, see you!