Friday, June 13 – Leaving Japan

 

Farewell to Mark, Mayumi and Yuka!

It gets light at 3:30 AM here and we could have gone for a walk or a last soak in the onsen, but we packed and organized our stuff instead.  It was a clear, warm day, and we set off at 8 for Kushiro, arrived at the airport, checked in and bid Mark, Mayumi and Yuka a fond farewell. 

Our last sighting of cranes!

One of our group has been masked for several days, and another fell sick yesterday.  I felt a cold coming on and stocked up on Kleenex.  I got a window seat and could see the coast of Hokkaido as we followed it south, before it hazed in as we approached the island of Honshu and Tokyo.  We landed at 11:30 and had to take a bus from Terminal 2 to Terminal 3, the international terminal.

Our flight to LAX didn’t leave until 7:45 PM, so our plan was to get a day room at one of the airport hotels.  The Villa Fontaine hotel is enormous with 1552 rooms.  We hauled our luggage there, but they didn’t have a room. (Our birding clothes are not good enough??) We tried the smaller Royal Park Hotel, but they couldn’t help us either.  

Landing in Tokyo

We stopped at a café to have a place to sit for a while and then finally checked in and dumped our luggage with American when their gate  opened at 4:45. They said we could use their lounge until we take off!  Yaaaay!  

The lounge had lots of snacks, wine, and comfortable chairs.  I was feeling somewhat worse and didn’t raid the refreshments as I ordinarily would have.   As we were walking to our gate, we noticed a shop called "Books & Drugs"!   Japan has a very strict policy on what medications can be brought into the country; I couldn't bring Benadryl, for instance.  But here I could purchase Tylenol Extra, after I showed them my boarding card!  I guess taking drugs out of the country is OK!

We finally boarded and took our Premium Economy seats, I took a couple of pills, ate dinner, watched movies and slept most of the way, landing in LA at 1 PM on the 13th, before we left Japan, thanks to the International Date Line!

 We were hoping to catch the Santa Barbara Airbus at 2 pm, and because Customs and Immigration were so efficient, we were through there and out on the sidewalk in no time!   I masked up on the ride home, hoping my severe head cold was just that.

The bus hit major traffic jams on the Conejo Grade and into Santa Barbara and we were an hour late, but our taxi was right there and took us home. 

I wasn’t feeling well enough to go out to dinner, so we had an emergency dinner of hot dogs and mushroom soup, and I went to bed.  My outdated test says I do have Covid – I wonder how many of our group has it by now? 

Bob picked up Mitsy on Saturday morning, who is very happy to be home. 

A happy cat!

Bob saw 45 new life birds which he thought excellent! This trip was a wonderful introduction to Japan, its natural history and culture,  thanks to our amazing leaders, Mark and Mayumi Brazil!

Thursday, June 12 – Heading back to Kushiro

 

Bob and I joined the others for a chilly bird walk at 6 AM; we turned onto a dirt road that I hadn’t seen before.  It led up through thick ferns and low bamboo to a stairway that descended to the stream that passes our hotel, but here stopped at a lovely waterfall.

After our breakfast buffet we took our luggage down to the front entry of the hotel. The staff knew we were leaving this morning and had taken our shoes out from their cubbies and laid them out on boards, so we could walk out in our socks onto the “clean” boards, slip on our shoes and proceed from the hotel!  The attention to detail at this hotel is quite amazing!

Shoes of departing guests laid out

Giant Butterbur, a very common plant

We drove to a campground in the Kushiro Shitsugen Wetlands National Park, a huge wetland that is slowly silting in and becoming meadow and then eventually forest.  The Red-Crowned Cranes were thought to be extinct in the early 20^th century, but a small breeding group was discovered in this wetland in 1924, resulting in the preservation of this large area for the cranes, and as a result, preservation for many more species.  We drove to an overlook and could see deer, eagles, heron, etc. grazing and hunting in the area.

Panorama of the wetlands

Our drivers took us into Kushiro to a restaurant for lunch.  We entered a large building, walking upstairs beside a huge saltwater aquarium containing lots of fish, large rays and some sharks.

I don’t know if those animals end up on the customers’ plates or are just for show!  Bob and I ordered beef curry and rice on Mark’s recommendation and got large plates of delicious curry that we couldn’t quite finish.

After lunch, we drove another hour to the Kushiro City Museum, situated on top of a hill and designed to appear as a crane taking off in flight.  An impressive building with three floors of exhibits, starting at the top with exhibits of Ainu clothing and tools.

Crane-shaped museum

Ainu weavers showing facial tattoos

Model of an Ainu weaver

Our vans drove us another hour to the Taito Hotel, owned by a photographer who had decorated the place with shots of cranes in flight. We got an upstairs room with shower, as the downstairs ones only have bathing in the onsen - which Bob has successfully avoided the whole trip.

We had our farewell dinner and settled in for the night.

Wednesday, June 11 -Exploring Akan-Mashu National Park

 I got up at six and decided I should experience the hot springs at our hotel.  I put on my Yukata (casual kimono-like garment) that the hotel supplies, grabbed the basket for carrying my towels, socks, etc. and left our room.  Immediately I ran into Mayumi who was also going there.   She was probably looking forward to a peaceful soak but now had to instruct me instead!

Hotel flower arrangements

We entered the women’s section, put our clothes in lockers, wrapped the key band around our wrists and went into the Onsen bath.   I sat on a tiny stool and spayed, soaped and sprayed again and then tried the first pool which was pretty cool.  I decided to move outdoors (freezing air!) and then lowered myself into a pool made of rough boulders that was a lot warmer.  It was lovely out there in the cool drizzle– there are more pools descending toward the roaring stream you can soak in until you finally get to the mixed sex pool (the only clothing optional one), but I didn’t feel like wandering about!

Woodcuts decorate the whole hotel

I eventually got out, went back to the lockers, dried myself off and went back to our room to get dressed for the buffet breakfast which had an enormous variety of choices. 

Breakfast buffet

At nine we met our drivers and took off in dense fog.   We first drove to the eastern side of the Akan-Mashu National Park and an overlook of a water-filled caldera which was unfortunately filled with fog.  We drove to a lower section of the park and walked on a boardwalk to a beautiful bright blue pond, full of small trout.

Mark took us to a small waterfall
where Cherry Salmon were valiantly flinging themselves upwards, trying to swim above the falls.  Only one in 100 makes it, and it was exhausting to watch them try!

Cherry Salmon valiantly trying leap above the waterfall

We continued circling the volcano and next we walked up to a hillside of bright yellow Sulfuroles, bubbling steam vents of sulfur dioxide that looked very frightening!

It was still overcast and getting onto 4 PM so we returned to our hotel and it started to rain quite hard.

A steaming sulfurole

We were relaxing in our room when the phone rang to tell us that a Hawfinch had arrived at the feeder outside the lobby.   We dashed downstairs and Bob had new life bird #45!

At 7:30 we returned to our private dining room for another elaborate feast featuring scallop sashimi, a hot pot of lamb and onions, miso soup, a whole grilled small fish, plus others!  Mayumi and Yuka gave us a demonstration of how to bow correctly (right from the hips with a perfectly straight back) and the angles: ~15%, 25%, and a full 90% for profound apology.

Mayumi and Yuka demonstrating proper bowing

We have another full day tomorrow before starting our journey back to the USA!

Tuesday, June 10 – Our last ocean cruise

 

Taking off in the fog

Spectacled Guillemots with red legs

Fog greeted us this morning.  After a bowl of mutton and cabbage soup I joined the others with our luggage and we set off in the three vans for the harbor, stopping at a 7-11 to pick up our lunches.  Our naturalist who guided us yesterday was there to meet us as we climbed on our boat for our last pelagic trip.   It was quite foggy, and we soon entered zero visibility and motored along in cold fog for an hour.  Suddenly it partially cleared, and we found ourselves moving around the bird-covered islands that we had seen yesterday.  Several Sea Otters were swimming offshore and we got good sightings of Spectacled Guillemots splashing about with their bright red legs.

We returned to the pier at 11:30 and set off, eating our lunches, sour plum-filled Onigiri (rice pressed into a triangular shape and wrapped in Nori) for me that I’ve become quite fond of. 

We turned inland, driving past vast hay fields for an hour or so, finally turning into our rural hotel, Yuyado Daiichi, a very fancy onsen resort.  We not only removed our shoes and put them in cubbies before entering, but the staff also cleaned off our suitcase wheels which makes sense if you’re going to go to all the trouble of not contaminating the inside floors with outside shoes.  

Our hotel lobby and birdwatching station

The beautiful hotel lobby overlooks a stream and patch of woods and has huge windows with chairs facing them as one of the main attractions here is the ability to see the very rare Blakiston’s Fish-Owl!   It is generally regarded as the largest owl species in the world, although there is some debate about which dimension determines "largest."  There are only 100 pairs left in Japan.  The hotel puts out some fish every evening and most nights the male comes by for a snack.  This male is very old; his current mate is very shy and never comes to the feeding perch.  

Our river-view room with lounge chairs & tatami mat

Our room is very beautiful, overlooking a running stream, with western style beds and a tatami area with futons available if one prefers to sleep on them.   Ironically the fancier the hotel, the more inconvenient the rooms are, for us, at least!  We have very comfortable lounge chairs overlooking the stream, but no desk to write my blog on (this place is strictly for relaxation, not work)  A sink room and a toilet room, but no shower as bathing is supposed to take place in the onsen room way down the hall.

We assembled in the lobby at 6 PM for a bird walk around the grounds and got good sightings of the Eurasian Woodcock flying the perimeter of his territory as they do every evening.

Raw prawn on rice with decorative nori

Custard with crab leg

We entered our private dining room at 7:30 and receive our menus, in Japanese, which listed 15 courses!  Many of those are just tiny bites of special vegetables like fiddleneck ferns, or a bit of fish with some roe on top, and another was a dish of lovely custard with a crab leg inside, or a whole fish!    One of us has Google Translate and helped us with the menu.

   

  We sat and watched for the owl until 11 PM and then gave up and went to bed.   At 11:30 we received a phone call that the owl had arrived! I put my Yukata on over my PJs (so great to not have to get dressed!) and dashed downstairs with Bob and there on the perch was an enormous owl calmly eating a fish!  He turned around a fluffed out his rear feathers – a huge mass of down!   He hung around for about ten minutes and then left.   So glad we have checked him off the list…and don’t have to stay up tomorrow!

Blakiston’s Fish-Owl with fish

Monday, June 9 – A Sunny Bird Cruise

 

It was sunny when we awoke at six, so we were optimistic about our ocean trip.  First, we joined Mark and most of the others for a 7 AM hours’ walk around a nearby park before returning for the hotel’s buffet breakfast.  I had a bowl of broth with cabbage, Bok choi and other veggies that was excellent.  We added several layers of clothes and took off for the harbor.

Bundled up against the cold

Kelp-laden boat returning to harbor

As we approached, we could see small boats pouring into the harbor past the tsunami walls.  They were laden with kelp, and pulled alongside the pier, where a crane picked up huge bunches of kelp off the boats and deposited it in a truck.  The boats are highly regulated; they have a season of only a few months for harvesting and each day must return to the harbor by 11 AM.

Crane lifting the kelp onto a truck

We met our naturalist guide, a very friendly man, who boarded our boat, as we took off, this time into the Pacific Ocean.  Our boat was considerably smaller than our previous ones, but only our group was on board so the captain could concentrate on what we wanted to see rather than what general tourists are interested in.

I stood in the bow for the 2.5-hour trip as there were only a couple of seats available, but it was sunny, and the spray didn’t reach us.  We saw Rhinoceros Auklets, a seabird with an orange bill with a “horn” on it that ranges from California to Hokkaido, so not a new bird for us, but nice to see.

Rhinoceros Auklet

  Then Bob picked up the Spectacled Guillemot, his 40^th new bird of the trip!  The captain steered us near some rocky island where we could just see a nest of the Red-faced Cormorants and catch a flash of bright red on their faces.

We returned to the harbor and drove to a 7-11 for lunch, stopping a little way on to see part of the process of intensive labor required to treat the kelp.  It is unwound from the heap of kelp dumped into a truck from a kelp boat, and stretched out on a bed of gravel, dried, cleaned and dried some more.   It is a very valuable product in Japanese cuisine and apparently worth all the effort.

 

Birding on a rocking boat

Kelp stretched out on a gravel bed for drying

We ate on the run, stopping several times along the way by streams and fields, to bird.  Bob picked up the Tundra Bean Goose, which is not supposed to be here this time of year.

It was getting late and we were all tired; we returned to the hotel, compiled the bird list.  Bob decided he didn’t want another fish meal at the restaurant we went to last night and stayed in the hotel.  The rest of us then walked over to our excellent restaurant for a non-fish dinner that Mark and Mayumi specially ordered!  Too bad Bob missed it!

Lots of dishes!

Sunday, June 8 – Driving to Nemuro Bay and the Pacific Ocean

 After breakfast we packed the vans and set off back to the harbor and climbed onto one of the whale watching boats.  There wasn’t any rain today and the sun even came out, which made for a much more pleasant trip.

Bob in green

  We could see Rauso Peak towering above our village.  We returned to the harbor after 2.5 hours without having seen much more than thousands of Short-tailed Shearwaters, a few Fulmars and two Black-footed Albatross.

We continued driving south, a couple of hours, stopping for our 7-11 lunch break

My unlikely lunch of pancakes stuffed with whipped cream and sweet red bean paste!

eventually turning off on the 18-mile Notsuke sand spit, the longest in Japan.  The spit itself is crowded with fishing gear, shacks, plastic fishing floats, boats in varying condition.  Strings of nets stretch out into the ocean, catching a lot of fish plus probably mammal, fish, and bird by-product. 

Family of four fox kits and their mom, who was shedding her winter coat, playing among the boats and other marine debris

Not a very attractive area, but the landward shore had good birding.  And finally, the elusive Middendorff’s Grasshopper Warbler hopped up on top of a bush and uncharacteristically sat there so we all could see it!

Map of the Sand Spit

Continuing on to Lake Furen Mark pulled into a rest area for us at the exact time five buses pulled in, disgorging hundreds of school kids, all in their uniforms, out on a field trip.  We decided we didn’t need a toilet after all and took off.  We reached the town of Nemuro and our hotel.  I had done my research and determined this hotel had a laundromat, so I grabbed my bag of clothes and dashed down the basement and found two nice machines that for $2.50 and some soap would supply us with clean clothes for the rest of the trip!

This hotel doesn’t offer dinner, so we all walked a couple of blocks to a very nice restaurant where we found multiple dishes of raw fish and shellfish, plus a baked potato, since we’re in the potato capital of Japan!!  The main course was perfectly cooked salmon, so Bob had something he wanted to eat.  Mark said the local sake is the best so several of us tried it - in very large glasses! – and it was very light and refreshing!

I popped my laundry into the dryer and in an hour had tons of clean clothes!

 

 

Saturday, June 7 – Our first boat trip

I awoke to drizzle and went over to the dining area’s small buffet.  I had warm pants, rain pants, silk turtleneck, wool sweater, down sweater and wind breaker, hat, and gloves on. 

Getting ready to board our ship

We drove the short distance to a harbor in which there were four small whale-watching boats filling up with tourists.  We took the last boat which wasn’t too crowded and clambered on board and up to the top deck in the stern.  It was raining lightly but since I had rain pants on I could plunk myself down on the wet bench without any problem. 

Birding in the rain

The sea was pretty calm but with a little chop.   I had promised myself a few decades ago that I would Never go on a pelagic birding trip ever again, and yet here I was: on a rocking boat trying to identify small black, grey, and white dots.  At least I was warm, but it is still my least favorite form of birding!   We saw some Dall’s porpoises, but not much else, and turned back after 2.5 hours – to try again tomorrow!

We drove down the coast through stretched out tiny villages, 2-3 buildings deep, at the base of steep wooded hillsides.  Schools, that double as tsunami evacuation sites, are located further up the hillsides.

We stopped for a convenience store lunch; ham and cheese with lots of lettuce on “Wonder Bread” for me.   We stopped at a nature preserve and walked along boardwalks for a mile or so.   The elusive Sakhalin Grasshopper Warbler called over and over but never showed himself.  There are a bunch of warblers that look Very similar, and without hearing the call I could never tell them apart (even with hearing the call I would be hard pressed….).   I saw a very impressive black fungus on a log.

We headed home for another terrific dinner and rest.

Tomato and Scallop Pizza

Pumpkin salad, Ajillo with Octopus 

 

Poster in our hotel!