Day 3 - After breakfast we went on a ferry cruise for 90 minutes to see the shiretoko national park from the water. it was a beautiful morning but the sun was right in our faces most of the was so it was difficult to see the coastline at time and difficult to take photos.
the first picture is of Turtle rock. Supposed to look like a turtle and i think it does. the rest of the photos explain themselves. 
next we went to shiretoko pass. this is where you can go from one side of the penninsula to the other. the mountain is the biggest in the NP. You can do a 1 day hike up and back but of course we were on a tour so no chance of that. The weather was so hot in the morning. Felt like we were back in osaka. the next two photos are from our hike to the lighthouse. We didn't make it to the lighthouse because a wild bear got in our way. The guide (ranger, not tour guide) was busy talking about something i couldn't understand so i walked ahead to take some photos and saw the bear. I kept saying "bear! bear!" to the group but of course no one had a clue what i was saying. the word for bear here is kuma. once i said this and started pointing everyone shit their pants. I think the guide was really suprised and by her reaction didn't have much experience with actually coming across bears in the wild. anyway we didn't make it to the lookout and had to go back and spent the next hour looking at crappy photos in the tourist centre. lesson learned - if you go somewhere with dangerous animals, learn what they're called in the native language.
after we left shiretoko we went to lake Mashu (Mysterious lake). It's called that because it's often covered with thick fog so you can't see the lake at all. it was amazing because it was only about 1 1/2 hours from the photos above at shiretoko. You can see how cold it is because mika is wearing a jumper. the 1st shot is of the lake and the second is a picture where the fog cleared for about 5 seconds from the wind. there's also wild squirrels in this area. 
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