Four Points Day 2: Iwanai to Onuma Koen

Distance: 365km

Our clever plan to get up early and get on the road to Matsumae this morning went up in a meat-and-beer-fueled cloud of stinky stinky fartiness. We breakfasted on the delicious baked goods that Heather and Sonomi had prepared (an apple pie and a chocolate chip banana loaf, respectively) while Mark last-minute packed, and we were on the road shorty after 9am (a good hour later than we'd hoped).

It was pretty much a textbook road trip day as the drive down the coast wound us through all manner of weather, from clouds, to sun, to rain...mostly the sun and the clouds, though. There were rocks...lots of rocks. My camera has probably got more rocks on it than it ever has, but when you see the odd spires along the south-west coast, you can hardly blame me.

Benke's Scabbard

Official, Hokkaido-only Kombini sponsor of Four Points: Seicomart!

We got so used to driving with the sea of Japan off our right shoulders that when we had to turn in land briefly before Esahi to bypass a mountain at the coast, it felt oddly wrong, and we had to put our GPS back on to make sure we weren't getting lost.

Once we returned to it, the sun persisted clear through to Matsumae, which, turns out, not only houses the only edo-era castle in Hokkaido, but also a temple complex. When lost in the mossy middle of it, you could almost believe the place was mainland Honshu and not the fairly-recently-developed northern outpost. With Matsumae being one of the points on Hokkaido closest to mainland, you start to wonder if, perhaps, the ancient culture might not have come over on the breeze from Tsugaru to the south.

As a castle, Matsumae was cute and picturesque on the outside (even when not ringed with its famous sakura), but its interior was a concrete and glass museum bastardization of what the castle once was. That's likely uncharitable, but, unfortunately, my only basis for comparison is the finest-Japanese-castle-ever: Himeji Jo.

In the temple grounds at Matsumae, the surrounding clouds filtered the light that made it through into a sepia yellow, giving the moss spread across pathways and gravestones a lurid glow.

As we drove away from the castle, the setting sun shot through the clouds, all gold glinting off the sea. We rounded the coast towards Hakodate, and we had to crane our necks more and more, hanging our cameras ever further out the windows to catch the fire of it going down until we rolled into Fukushima and the hump of the mountains blocked the sun entirely from view.

And here, in their shadow, twilight came up--material in faerie veils and plumes of mist between trees and hills. So vast were they that there could have been whole towns hiding behind them. They were unlike anything I'd seen in Japan before, and they were the perfect hazy end to this ever-changing day.

Certainly nothing beyond Fukushima was as momentous, from our decent Italian restaurant, found randomly on the side of the road to Hakodate, to our over-packed onsen (also, randomly on the side of the road).

Now all that's left is a long, dark drive up to our free campsite at Onuma in the hope that we can actually find it in the black.