The first weekend in February, we took another road trip out to Abashiri since the drift ice situation had been so damn disappointing last year (I covered it in detail last year, likely out of frustration from not seeing it).
Fortunately this year was a little more ice-filled than last, and when we got out on our sunset icebreaker cruise, it was looking damn near like the north west passage out there:
As the drift ice may drive you to believe when it floats in close and chokes up the town's harbours, Abashiri can seem a pretty grim, pretty bleak place. Its second biggest attraction is a prison, which I'd like to believe says something about the tone of the town. When we passed through Abashiri in September on our Four Points Tour, we were certainly unable to find anything more exciting in the place (well, we hit the very nice Museum of the Northern Peoples for a second time, but that hardly makes up for the generous amounts of boring going on in town).
However, each time I've rolled up on the place for the past two Februaries, I've wound up having a blast. Last year we had a giant slumber party (for what else can you call it when you carpet the floor of a small-ish Japanese apartment with about 18 people) on the Friday night, and then an even giant-er blow out at Caroline's on the Saturday night. This year we caught some nepalese food for lunch, some blue beer on the sunset ice cruise at dusk, and then we crashed at June's again on Saturday night, and it was a night filled with hot wine, pizza, and excellence.
Set against that grim backdrop of ice and lowlands and sea, it really has got to be the people that make Abashiri so habitable.
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