Saturday, May 31 - Driving inland

I  missed the 6 AM birding walk and went to the elegant lobby for coffee, and then breakfast.  

Lobby with Ainu-designed decoration

 We packed up and piled onto the vans, Bob and I with Mark, our very interesting leader who both drove and taught me much about mysterious customs of Japan, i.e. why do Japanese license plates only have 2 - 4 numbers on them?  In the corner and top are small symbols representing the town, prefecture, plus the color of the plate itself, plus other indicators, resulting on only 2-4 numbers needed.

We drove inland and up into the mountains, through miles lush farm lands.  The volcanic soil is very rich and dark; Hokkaido is famous for its dairy, potatoes, and hay.
Mark is very considerate of his clients and we stopped at a public restroom that was as elaborate, with a variety of buttons for spray choices, as the fancy hotel toilets!  And outside were five large vending machines selling all types of coffee and fruit drinks.

A ways on we stopped at our first “convenience” store, a 7-11, and were set loose to buy whatever we wanted for lunch.   The variety was stunning!  Bob got a package of chicken skewers which I got heated up for him.   I was craving sweets and got what looked like two pancakes with a large blog of sweet red bean paste between them, and a Mochi ball (white rice beaten into a paste) that turned out to also be filled with red bean paste:  Sugar overload!!

Local variety cherry blossoms

We stopped several times along the road and walked around a closed summer camp on a lake and saw an impressive number of species.  Bob saw eight new life birds!!    And we both got great views of the Black Woodpecker, one of the bigger woodpeckers in the world, all black with a brilliant red crest.  Really great!!

Shinto shrine

I was getting exhausted when we finally headed to our funky little hotel in Nukabira.  We were quite worried about this night:  Tatami mats and no bathroom in the room.  The welcoming lobby was full of  books, old furniture, etc, and all the rooms turned out to be different.  We lucked out and got an ensuite room, lined with tatami mats, with a low table in the middle, very simple and elegant!.  

As we were were relaxing in our room, we felt a slow rolling earthquake that lasted about 20 seconds (later to find our from a friend in Santa Barbara that it was centered in Hiroo, south of us and measured 6.1).

We gathered in the lobby to do the list of the birds we all have seen so far and then adjourned to the dining room for dinner.   A much simpler dinner, but still too many courses, and too much food!   Bob was happy that  our individual sauté pans were for cooking slices of beef, onion and green pepper, rather than for rare types of raw seafood., but cups of soup, rice and other dishes kept arriving way past the point when I was full!

We retired at 8 to find futons had been spread on our tatami mats that actually look very comfortable, if only we can manage to get down onto them and up again!!