Japan 2022 Day 4

Day 4: Lake Akan to Shiretoko

Sammy, you are the winner of the ”pick what was missing from yesterdays blog” as you are the only who noticed the absence of some pictures ( shame on the rest of you!).

The missing photo was a short video of Phil trying to eat a green tofu ball. He needed to prick it gently to burst the skin. Here it is…hope it comes through this time.

While we are on the subject of food, the Japanese are very covid-conscious. Every time you enter a restaurant or hotel dining room, they take your temperature and require you to hand sanitise ( in addition to the plastic gloves and masks). There’s also a set of dos and donts

And some restaurants are very thoughtful and give you a mask holder

Funny mask story….. in one of our hotel rooms there was a piece of paper with the words ”Mask Inn” . Sara thought that the piece of paper was just a promotion for the local restaurant. In fact, it was a disposal bag for your used mask!

Today was a travelling day. It took us about 6 hours to get to Shiretoko because it was pouring rain the whole time, with heavy fog as we crossed the mountains. Clearly Satoko’s mascot to keep away rain was not working for us.

We stopped to look out at the beautiful lake mashu ( but all we could see was mist). We also stopped at a local restaurant for lunch along the way

The Shiretoko hotel is on a peninsula, and high on a hill. The rain came down torrentially for hours, but it was the wind that really made us take notice. The building moved back and forth for hours. Wind finally died down around 11 pm

Drinks in sally and les ’ room before a magnificent dinner in a private room. And here we all are in our relaxed kimono mode

Sally was particularly taken by the glistening cupcake containers used to hold ginger. She collected as many as she could for Isabel’s next birthday party ( and this isnt the first time that Sally has collected items from a dinner.……in tokyo, she liked a plate with cats on it so much, that Satoko arranged for her to get one)