Despite our early start this morning (getting up at 6am and on the road by just after 7 from Onuma), we either took on far too much in terms of a drive all the way from Onuma to Erimo, or we took too many long stops, but we wound up finishing dinner at our halfway point in Tomakomai at 3pm.
That isn't to say we didn't have fun along the way. There was a necessary stop in Yakumo for Ross' now-infamous Panorama Park, where we go to watch to big white fuwafuwa creepily inflate itself.
There were kombinis and ice cream and Tyranosaur-topped second-hand-chique boutiques. There was also delicious, perfectly-spiced, overly-large portions of Japanese curry. There was also piles of rain, interspersed with perfect sun. It lead me to conclude that if you ever tire of the weather in this place, you should probably just drive a hundred kilometers.
We attempted to recover some ground by blazing down the Hidaka expressway to its end, then taking to the coast proper. From the expressway, the region hadnt seemed that exciting, but once we got to the coast and the grassy hills along it started to swell, Mark and I seemed to react to it at almost the same time. Down this way, Hokkaido makes up for it's reputation as the horse capital of Japan with all kinds of them roaming the coastal rises.
The shore isn't as rocky as the Sea of Japan coast or as cliff-like as the Pacific coast of the southwest, although as we got further and further along, the straight coast started to grow back the rocky spires, seemingly just as we arrived in Samani, where we would be staying with co-ALT Ali, just shy of Erimo.
Our long ride meant that the sun set behind the clouds before we ever reached Samani, and we were clinging to the last of the light as we waited for Ali to meet us in a pull-out along the ocean just outside her town. Together, we drove to her place, dumped our stuff, and then headed to an onsen resort nearby for one of the hottest onsens I've had in a while up on mount Apoi.
After, we headed to dinner at one of the only izakaiyas open on this long weekend Monday, and then back to Ali's in the rain. Compared to last night's midnight tent pitching at Onuma, the futons that Ali laid out for us on the floor of her living room were the definition of swank.
We'll be looking to make another early start tomorrow as we need to take in Erimo Misaki, Kushiro, and Nemuro all in one day.
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