A stabbing white light pierced my closed eyelids and I opened my eyes to wonder whether the sun was exploding in its death throes. But no. It was Iona, opening the curtain a sliver to check on the day. The day light coming into the room from her tiny parting of the curtain was invasive. We commented quietly on the effectiveness of the blackout curtains.
It reminded me of the solar eclipse in London when the sun was covered about 98% and yet it was barely noticeable that most of the sun was blocked. Yep, I'm comparing Iona's curtain parting to an eclipse. No, there's no foundation in science for it. Just the brain memory of flooding white light.
Anyway, we cycled through the shower. It's a tiny bathroom. Possibly one of the smallest I've ever been in. With the most electronics. The toilet has buttons I'm too scared to touch. Iona has it sorted. Something she does makes her giggle every time she goes in there.
Iona has embraced the gowns and slippers provided. Col and I are undecided. Mainly because we haven't actually tried them yet. In fact, I'm so uncouth I keep forgetting to take my shoes off at our hotel room door.
We leave the room in search of breakfast and finalising our transport logistics. Some of our trains are broken due to Typhoon Lionrock that caused land slips last week so we have to make some other plans.
Hunger is a force to be reckoned with. We found an excellent wee restaurant and we ate a bowl of noodles (me), fish with rice (Col) and rice and egg and pickled wet socks (Iona). Iona even ate the pickled wet socks and declared it all delicious. I tasted the wet socks, and thought it was more like pickled unidentifiable green vegetable, finely chopped, with nothing resembling wet socks. Mind you, I tried them from Col's plate.
From there we visited the tourist information place. Again. We think they must be darting for cover when they see us now. While Iona stood in the queue, Col and I harassed another poor woman. This one had "volunteer" on her jersey. She spoke no English. And our Japanese is very sketchy. I've mastered konichiwa for hello. Arigato for thank you. Oy shi Kat ta for "it's delicious" and that is it so far. This woman was so patient and tried to understand our crazy requests. I found a brochure for a museum in Hakodate about the indigenous Ainu people and was asking if there was something similar in Sapporo. Amazingly, she understood my question and took off to rummage through the shelves of brochures. But she couldn't find whatever it was she was looking for. I then asked about the botanical gardens. She was very excited to inform me there was a little museum there with indigenous artifacts. Yay. We all left each other pleased.
Once Iona had train tickets reserved and we had information on flights from the end of the tour back to Sapporo to try and get our dates back on track, we left for a walk to a sports store (looking for rugby jerseys for Col) and then coming back to the gardens for a quick lunch.
The sports store was great. Iona tried on togs. How she plucked up courage to tackle togs without prepping for days, I'm completely unsure. I fancied some too but I'm still trying to psych myself up. Col never found rugby jerseys. But the togs were a great find.
We headed to the gardens via a massive mall. As we passed a travel agent, we decided to enquire about prices for flights from Abashiri to Sapporo. We got Wi-Fi so I emailed Ken (tour guide for the cycling) to ask if we could get dropped back at the airport. I unfortunately had a Swype fail with the email subject to him. He thinks I think I'm on a tour called "Hokkaido whitetail cycle tour" instead of the "Hokkaido Shiretoko cycle tour". I may be mystifying him.
We ate our bakery purchases outside the travel agent while we waited for Ken's reply. The croissant was great. To this moment I'm unsure what was in my sandwich. I have to say, if I had to guess, I'd call it sweetened yoghurt. Which makes no sense in a sandwich. So I'm not dwelling on that any longer.
We've decided the sandwiches were leftover dinners in between white bread. Col had potato peanut curry, with bacon and egg as well. Weird. Iona's was a normal chicken lettuce sandwich. It was an amusing lunchbox medley. And my sandwich was obviously meant to be dessert.
Ok. No reply from Ken so we decided to buy the tickets. Bought them with cash because their machine wouldn't accept either credit card. Great.
Wandered to the museum from there. Paid our 420 yen to get in. Found a lovely museum with stuffed animals and old Ainu artifacts. Pottery. Sleds. Hardly any English.
And... One of the cabinets had stuffed puffins in it. Japan has puffins! I'm going to ask Ken if we can find puffins.
Found a rose garden. Scared off a bunch of women weeding it with our presence (It may have been coincidental that they left as we arrived). Found the greenhouse. Enjoyed Pocari Sweat from a vending machine (basically Powerade).
From there, guess where we went? Back to the visitor centre. Yes. We hadn't traumatised them enough. Iona remembered we needed a bus reservation for a part of our journey since the trains aren't running.
I think this might be the last they see of us. But we haven't left yet.
Back to the hotel to relax before hunger drove us out. Ramen alley was our destination. We found the best tiny place. Well, actually, the restaurant down the road found us the best ramen place. The first place we went into (with a cartoon yellow duck outside) only had one meal available. We looked confused. He took pity on our inability to name any other did besides ramen and took us outside, down the street and to a ramen place.
He wasn't wrong. It only seated eight people. An obscure Beatles album was playing. The chef cooked right in front of us. Patrons entered and used an electronic machine to order and pay. We missed that part. The waitress took our order. I had roast pork ramen. Col had spicy ramen. And Iona had butter corn ramen. Iona's came with a huge cube of butter floating on top. But the corn was delicious. Mine was scrumptious. Col's was good too.
Wandered back to the hotel and crashed into bed before 7.30 p.m. Bring on a deep sleep like last night!
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