Part 4
Continuing our road trip of Eastern Hokkaido, I took her to all the natural locations of Eastern Hokkaido I’d explored in the Summer but had yet to see in the Winter. The first, beautiful view of frozen Lake Kussharo was enough to stave off the wind that battered us from all directions. Following the shore around Lake Kussharo brought us to Sunayu with its Nessie-like mascot, Kusshie. In the summer, Sunayu is a famous destination to have foot baths in the sand, as you can read here. In the Winter, the warm sands prevent the ice from melting and hordes of swans come to be fed bread crumbs by easily-amused tourists! In this hotbed of geothermal activity, just further up the road was the onsen town of Kawayu and sulphuric gas mountain, Iozan. I’d planned on making a visit up to serine Lake Masshu but, unbeknownst to me, the mountain road is closed and unplowed during the Winter months. We carried on to Abashiri (where I was the week before for Queens of the Drift Ice) to have a late lunch at a tiny train station café that served home-made hamburger and katsudon. We’d planned on going drift ice cruising and snowmobiling but the warm weather still kept the drift ice away and we’d arrived too late to go snowmobiling. After a round-trip tour of Eastern Hokkaido and a few hundred kilometers later, we made our way back home to nap off a leisurely day of sightseeing.