Warning: This Post Contains No Pictures

Hello,

We are now, once again, back in Sapporo. We know the city, and it`s a good place to start traveling south, as we are to do tomorrow. We will travel to Ominato, and then via bus to Mutsu on the Axe Peninsula (look on a map and you`ll know instantly where it is). There is one of Japan`s most important spots if you`re a buddhist (which we are not); Osorezan-san (which means something like The Mountain of Dread). It`s a mountain (surprise surprise) which is supposedly surrounded by ravens and hissing sulphrous fumaroles. Sounds nice.

Well, once again I`m sitting here discussing things that have yet to happen, so I`m going to wait on the depiction of Osrezan `til we`ve actually been there.

Since the last post we`ve re-visited Abashiri and this time actually had time to see the prison museum. It was quite cool to see how miserable and odd the original prison was, and although it was very tourist-y, it was rather fun to see mechanical prisoners chasing a mechanical mail-pidgeon.
I bet you all are thinking `on with the pictures, man!`, but as the title hinted (or flat out told), there are no pictures on this post, since this youth hostel`s computer ain`t really the best there is.
Anyhow, I`ll probably post a `just pictures` post sometime after this one, so you can see and not just read. But that`s later.

After Abashiri we went to Asahikawa Zoo, which apparently is Japan`s most popular. The DVD-suply for my HandyCam took a real punch there, as I filmed more than an hour I think. Took some photos too (bet you wanna see `em; who doesn`t love penguins?), but alas, no pictures. We saw, as mentioned, penguins, but also polar-bears, brown-bears, tigers, lions, panthers and even a gigantic rhino. Of course there were more animals, but I ain`t going to bore you with a list of zoo-creatures. It was really nice, and although my save-animals-from-cages instincts came on, the animals seemed to be living a rather good life.

After that we went to Asahidake Onsen; an onsen resort consisting of about 10 hotels (nothing more) at the foot of Hokkaidos highest peak, measuring 2291 meters. We climbed it, which really wasn`t something fit for our physique. As the air got thinner, it got a lot harder. It took us some three hours to climb from the ropeway-station at 1550 meters to the top (we climbed from the ground to the ropeway-station the day before in one and a half hour, so we thought we deserved to use the ropeway the next day). The view from the top was nothing short of spectacular; so it really paid of. The hike down from the top to the ropeway-station only took us some 55 minutes though, which we found quite funny. Our shoes took a beating though; as we skidded down fast through almost razor-sharp volcanic rocks. We actually had an excuse for the rush, besides wanting to get to the onsen at our hotel: we didn`t want to miss the last ropeway, since that would mean hiking down through the forest at nightfall in bear-country. Which would not be nice.

Anyhoo, I just remembered a fun thing that happened that happened when we first arrived at Asahidake Onsen. When we arrived at our hotel there were three people in front of it talking, so we were polite and said hello. We started talking (in english) and after a while the conversation went something like this:
Me: "So, where are you from by the way?"
The Tall Guy: "Ehm, Sweden."
Me: "Oh! Well then, hej!"
(Our maternal language is swedish if we haven`t mentioned it, and "hej" is hello in swedish). That was some surprise, and the two swedes turned out to be really nice (the third guy was some american they had just met, who had lived in Japan so long he had forgotten how to speak english). The guy`s name was Samuel, and his girlfriend`s (wife? Don`t really remember the specifics) name was Liang Liang. She`s originally chinese, now living in Sweden, but working for Volvo in Japan, if I understood it correctly. Quite international. Anyhow, we ended up sitting in the lounge at the hotel drinking some beers and having a good time till rather late. It was a fun evening. We gave them the address to this page, so if you (Samuel or Liang) sees this; please comment so people don`t think we`ve made you up.

This post turned out to be really long, so I think I`m going to break it up and post the rest later. And that`ll be a post that requires pictures, if not video, becuase it was strange to say the least.

And on that cliffhanger, I bid you adieu.