Day 18: Came a Long Way to See the Red-crowned Cranes
We took the 8:51am train from Sapporo to Kushiro at the far east side of Hokkaido. It was more of my idea, I wanted to come to see the red-crowned Japanese cranes. I imagined they would be beautiful to look at when they are dancing on the snow. However, as the train headed east, it had less and less snow on the ground. By the time we got to Kushiro, there was almost no snow left on the ground. Very sunny. It was 1:14pm already (in Japan, everything is so exact, the train stopped at the station at 1:14pm sharp, no more no less), we found a tourist office in the station, checking how we could go to see the Japanese cranes. From my research, I know there was a Japanese Crane Reserve near the airport. Turned out that place was quite far the train station. And we had missed the morning bus, there were only 3 bus a day heading that direction. The next would be in an hour and half, and by the time we would get there, the reserve would be closing already.
The lady at the tourist office, spoke very very limited English, it was like a game of charade, she acted and I guessed what she was trying to say. She was extremely helpful though, and was really trying to help us. She suggested us another location in the north side of Kushiro where we could see cranes in their natural habitat - the Kushiro Marshland. That location was also an hour away, the next bus to go there was a minute away. I said we could run, but she insisted we did not have enough time to get to the bus stop. So, kind of disappointed, I was like. I came all the way from Sapporo to here to the cranes. I asked if there was other way, perhaps taxi? She said the taxi to airport was about 6000 yen, the reserve was close to the airport, it probably would be a bit more than 6000 yen one-way. Another option was a tourist taxi, which was roughly 5400 yen per hour. That was what we did. We hired a tourist taxi for 2 hours, which would take us to the crane reserve and back to our hotel.
Arrived at the crane reserve, we were pretty much the only visitors there, not until when we left, there was a group tour just arriving. We could have chosen to go to the other place where the crane lived naturally. But the lady at the tourist office warned us that you may see a lot of the cranes, or none at all there, there was no guarantee. Due to the limited time we had in this town, to be safe, I decided to go to the reserve despite the cranes were all tagged. They looked majestic. The dancing in the snow images were long gone, since there was only some scattered snow on the ground. But they were still great to look at. They were walking along the streams, eating on the glasses or the little worms in the ground. I actually had no idea what they ate. I took a lot of pictures. My last chance, I thought, since our taxi was timed. Actually the reserve was not that big, so we finished in less than an hour. The taxi ride back took 40 mins or so. So, we even had some time left from 2 hours limit. We just let it go, the taxi driver would not have understood where we wanted to go anyway, I did not want to confuse him. He was a short skinny older Japanese man in suit, seemed like a nice man.
We would have liked to see the marshland and the algae near Lake Akan too. But this region was a lot bigger and less touristy (for foreigner) here, ideally we should have rented a car to drive ourselves, or it would take times to travel from place to place by buses. One day is definitely not enough to see this region of Hokkaido. Anyway, the crane was my main goal, and we did see it. I was glad. Checked in at the hotel. Our room has a fantastic view of the port and sunsets, there were 5 lighthouses in the Kushiro Port. We walked and snacked a bit at the Fisherman Wharf "Moo", not far from our hotel. Otherwise, the town was pretty dead. Restaurants didn't open for dinner until 6pm-ish, so we went back to hotel for a quick freshen-up. Dinner in one of those Japanese BBQ place (izakaya), two of us had 4 dishes, 2 ramens and 1 dessert. Definitely eating too much, like those pigs in Spirited Away.
Had an early night in the hotel, watched some silly Japanese singing contest on TV, just like the American Idol kind of things, pop culture is universal. Most every country is doing the exact same thing, just in different language. Going to stay in a ryokan in Shirogane onsen region near Biei, where we will have our own spring in the room and a 11-course meal, tomorrow. I am really quite looking forward to that.
See the other photos from Day 18 here.
