Hokkaido - Lake Akan NP

On our last night we stayed at a place called Lake Akan. It's a small onsen village right on the lake. It's famous for Ainu (japanese indigenous people) culture, fishing, onsens and an active volcano. The hotel was great. Beautiful views over the lake and it was my first time in Japan to sleep on a bed and not the floor. I think i was more excited about that than anything else. We arrived pretty early compared to other days so we had a few hours to explore before dinner.

This is kind of like an Ainu village but really was just souvenier shopping. this area is famous for wood carving as you can see from the people in the top photos. these are carved from one piece of wood. Click on the picture to see them bigger.

This first picture is the hotel we stayed in. I didn't get a photo of the beds though. the second photo is me and mika in Yukata. You always wear these at hotels in japan. Usually you put it on after you go to the public bath. im also wearing wooden shoes but you can't see them in that photo. the last photo is dinner at the restaurant. The food was beautiful. It was an all you can eat buffet. There was crab, prawns, sashimi, DIY nabe (lots of food in a pot) and best of all nice big pieces of steak. I had two pieces of steak as i was pretty sick of eating seafood by the last night.

The next morning we went on a boat cruise of the lake before breakfast. the first picture is our boat taken from our room window. the second pic is round moss. not sure what the go is but lake akan is famous for it. the bottom left photo is the volcano just behind the town. The last time there was any action was in 2000. I saw some photos of cars covered in ash and shops burnt down. pretty amazing.

After breakfast we visited another lake. It had a great view of another active volcano. It's been smoking like that since April. Basically that's the end of our trip. we spent the next 8 hrs sitting on the bus heading back to sapporo airport to go home.