Japan 2022 Day 5

Day 5: Shiretoko peninsula

Postscript to day 4:

Am resending the plastic gloves video, as Phil shows a masterful way of placing the gloves on the hands before embarking on the restaurant’s buffet selection

We have found another really good use for these plastic gloves….you can take food home from the buffet with them ( like pieces of pineapple!)

And for Martin, wanted to give you some weather information so you would appreciate the strength and power of the winds that made our building rock yesterday…..gusts of 130 km per hour and 8.6 mm of rain was dumped at 9 pm ( more wind is expected tonight)

The day started overcast and rainy so when we got to the observation spot for looking at the Kuril islands, which are in dispute between Russia and Japan, we had to imagine how it looked as all you could see was fog! So we didnt get to see Russia.

The reward for the gloomy weather was that we saw some brown bears looking for salmon in the stream.

The day improved after 11 am. We visited Shiretoko National Park which was designated a World Heritage site in 2005 and is a peninsula with mountain ranges running down the centre. The scenery is awesome.

The land in these pictures was used for crops and dairy farming in the first half of the 20th century until about the 1960s but then people gradually abandoned their fields, leaving the land vulnerable to rampant development. To protect against this threat, the town of Shari began seeking donations across the country with which to purchase the land in 1977. Their slogan was ”Help buy a dream in Shiretoko”. This is the Shiretoko 100m3 movement . it took 33 years to purchase all of the land in the protected area.

There is a boardwalk which takes you out to one of the 5 lakes in this area. it’s protected by an electrified fence to keep the bears out.

The windbreak fence in the distance was erected to block the wind and control drifting snow ( as trees cant grow in locations where the wind blows strong). Snow piles up on both sides of the windbreak fences like comforters, protecting seedlings against the harsh winter conditions.

We then visited the Furepe falls which were underwhelming but the pictures from the observation spot are nice!!!

After a quick lunchstop ( we had to make the most of the sunshine), we visited a stream where the salmon try to swim upstream

and then to a beautiful waterfall called the Oshin-koshin falls.

And here’s some more interresting signs