Adventure The Fourth: Abashiri Ice

This makes the fourth and final installment in the It’s February—GET OUT! adventure series. When this all began, we were getting some of the coldest days of this winter. Now, at the month’s end, the sun is beating down on the snow outside, and last week we had a good couple of days of melt going on (though we’re still getting a bit of snow, from time to time, which keeps me from going into full-out mourning for winter’s passing). From that freeze to that thaw, it would seem that whole seasons have turned. Somewhere over the course of The Busiest Month Ever, dastardly plans were hatched and common threads became salient in ways I had only ever hoped they might.

Abashiri is located on Hokkaido’s north east coast, right on the sea of Okhotsk (don’t bother; I can neither remember or pronounce it, and I live here).

Its geographic location means that every February its shore gets plugged up with pack ice that originates in a Siberian river across the way in Sakhalin.

The sight is something to behold, and local harbour towns run icebreaker tours several times a day during the icy season. I’d been aiming to get out to see it for some time, so when some HAJET kids decided to host an ice-viewing weekend, I had to get in on it.

There was only one problem:

No ice.

Damn.

However, being adventurous, wayward souls, the ALTs of Hokkaido weren’t going to let a little inclemently warm weather stand between them and a good time. We’d taken a five and a half hour train ride out of Sapporo to get to this distant corner of the island, and we weren’t leaving until we got something out of it, whether icy or otherwise. Both nights in Abashiri were mad, high-school-like affairs with BYOBooze, impromptu YouTube dance parties, and apartments/houses absolutely carpeted in futons and passed out foreigners.

We got a little culture and a little onsen in during the days, and on Sunday afternoon we ditched the train back in favour of a afternoon drive to Asahikawa through the rolling foothills around Daisetsuzan National Park. Just outside the city, we came across the Sounkyo ice castle, and it provided all the ice we could have ever asked for in Abashiri.

But that’s all the words I’ve got for the weekend, so maybe I should just let the photos speak for themselves.

P.S. I'm retconning this back to February.