3rd Day of Travel – SAPPORO & NOBORIBETSU
So before I started this whole traveling thing, every time that I asked about the famous hot springs in the HOKKAIDO region every person always answered the same thing: NOBORIBETSU. Since my friend was really determined to get into an ONSEN, I decided that this would be the place.
Waking up early, we made our way to the train station. It was a long ride that we had to get on. About an hour and 15 minutes later we were looking at a very, very old station. It was amazing. There were almost no electronics. A gentleman stood at the gate to let you in and out of the station.
In front of the station there were statues of ONI, and a few stuffed bears. Not like a stuffed animal, but an actual bear that was stuffed… After standing in amazement for a little while, we decided to try to get to the ONSEN. I was looking around for signs, when my friend found out that some visitors that walked back into the station were speaking Cantonese.
Ben proceed up to them and ask them about info. I was happy, because this meant that I didn’t have to work as hard. It was about 2-3 minutes into his conversation that I noticed a sign on the wall.
“Discount tickets to the NOBORIBETSU ONSEN area sold here!” So I waited for my friend to finish his last sentence with the couple before making my way to the window to buy the tickets.
He followed me, and I asked, “So, what did you find out?” His response was disappointing, “Nothing.” Wow, I still wonder what he was speaking to them about for a good 5-10 minutes to find out nothing…
Anyhow, I bought the tickets and moved towards the bus stop. A short 10-15 minutes later we were at the base of a mountain. It was breath taking! The views were amazing!
We got out of the bus, and decided to look around. Quickly finding the ONSEN that we wanted go to, we moved on to see the things around the area. There were many funny statues and souvenir shops. We looked into many of them. There were interesting buildings all over the place. The stench of sulfur filled the air.
After unsuccessfully looking for a path to walk along to see the mountains we decided to go to the ONSEN. This hot spring was awesome!
DAIICHI Hotel was the one that we decided on going to. It was fairly expensive compared to the others, but there were at least seven different types of hot springs that you can choose from and I went into all of them! Well, almost all of them. I didn't go into the ice cold one… I’m not crazy… well not yet…
After about an hour, I was starting to get hungry and wanted to get something to eat. We decided to just head back. We had about ￥2,000 to our names at this time. Therefore, we ate lunch at a 7-11 Convenience store. I had two melon breads and Ben had a cup-o-noodles: curry flavor. The trip back home was a quiet one.
We finished it off with going to an underground mall in the SUSUKINO area. For dinner we had YOSHINOYA Beef Bowls. Walking around looking at all the lights in the city and making our way around the underground mall was fun, but at the same time frustrating.
It was really annoying my buddy that we couldn’t buy anything, and shopping around wasn’t helping. Therefore we decided to head back and prepare for an early start to HAKODATE tomorrow.
Hopefully, our money issues will be resolved, and good times will come rolling again!
For more photos click HERE!
Next, we go to HAKODATE!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment