Hokkaido

The only bad thing I can say about this trip is that it was expensive. And maybe not long enough. Hokkaido is really an amazing place. Every once in a while, you'll be reminded you're in Japan, but it's easy to forget. On the trains, sometimes I would get lost and think I was on my way to Yellowstone or somewhere in Alaska. The scenery is completely different than anywhere I have been in Japan. Everyone that I have told I was going to Hokkaido kept saying "Oh, it's so wide!" or "It's so open!" and now I understand what they meant. I realized how much I had missed open space.
Anyway, I went up with a friend for a week and feel like we were able to do a lot, despite the amount of travelling we had to do on such a big island. This picture (not a great example of the open space) is the "top night view" in Japan. It was in Hakodate, a city they compare to San Francisco in its feel. It was refreshingly cold that night and we were able to eat some good food, including some delicious squid jerkey. Yumm.

This was a very un-Japanese looking church in Hakodate. There were a lot of buildings like this, cobblestone roads, old brick warehouses and hills, which is why it was easy to see why it's compared to San Francisco.
















We saw this crab at the morning market- it's still alive, but didn't look very comfortable.














Onuma National Park. We took a bike ride around the lake and actually had a few hours where we hardly saw any other people. It was nice.













The same lake- there were several small islands in the lake, and they built bridges to a few of them.














This is the view from the train when I got confused and thought I was in Idaho.














This was in Daisetsu-zan National Park. I'm not sure what the arrows are for, but we think it has something to do with snow. It was a beautiful area.

And that's all for now. More on the trip later.