I keep forgetting cool things I wanted to tell you. For example, cheese is very rare in Japan, but some of the dairies in Hokkaido are making their first attempts to market "chi-su". So far what you see is mozzarella (used in “piza”), cheddar (used in "sando-ichi"), and raclette! Not only do they make raclette, but have imported the Swiss way of eating it as well!
Yesterday for lunch I stopped at a tiny eatery to have a bowl of Uni-Don, or sea urchin on rice. The servings of sea urchin were extremely generous, and for the first time I got to really degustate the delicate, buttery flavor of the spiny echinoderm. Not cheap, but delicious.
Today I went across the south side of the island, in an easy 6 km hike. Lots of older couples hiking around Rebun Island, for apparently older retired folks can afford the money and the time. Most of my fellow hikers look extremely fit. Two ladies, who were real keen on wildflowers took me under their wing, obviously worried that I was hiking alone, and despite the fact that they didn't speak any English took it upon themselves to try to teach me the Japanese names of the different wildflowers we met in our walk, shared their snack with me at the halfway point, accompanied me to the bus stop on the way back, and would have taken me out to coffee had it not been for the sad fact that the coffee house was closed.
Back to the beginning of the hike, it was a steep slope to begin with, but once on the watershed boundary it was an easy walk, with lots and lots of small flowers. The high point of the hike was Momowia Peak, which my two angels explained meant Peach Rock. It is an unusual volcanic neck that developed some sort of steep exfoliation joints, so I think it should have been called Celery Rock. The views were spectacular, with slopes dropping steeply into idyllic coves hundreds of meters below us.
A long walk along the watershed boundary brought us to Motoji Lighthouse, which is a modern lighthouse with no real call to fame, except perhaps that it seems to be an obligatory rest 2/3 down the whole route. From there the road steadily goes down toward Shiretoko village (the one with the closed coffee house), where we took the bus back to the Ferry Terminal. My indomitable ladies were ready to take another bus to see an unusual split rock on the west side of the island, from where they were going to walk back to town. They were not sure at what time they might be back, so I regrettably had to pass on the second walk because I had to take the ferry to Reshiri Island.
Japanese like to stay close to the ground, which is why they like seating on tatamis, and even in restaurants with Western seating you can see half the clients sitting in the lotus position on the flat surface of the bench or chair. They also like sleeping close to the ground, on futons, which is particularly hard for me in the mornings since I have to roll over on four points, and laboriously pick myself up. I hate to acknowledge that I am overweight, so lifting all that extra weight really taxes my knees. But never was the love for being on the ground more evident than in the ferry. Instead of the rows of padded seats you would expect, the floor of the ferry is covered with tatamis, where families happily spread out as if they were on a picnic. Only the infirm and the elderly, like me, seat on the very few benches along the walls. One family seated by my side included grandma, and the old lady was clearly unhappy about the arrangement. Exasperated, her daughter finally gave up and took grandma to the open area, where the old lady was able to finally relax by plopping gracefully to the floor.
I am now installed in another very comfortable hotel for the next three nights. Tomorrow was going to be the big attempt to climb Mt. Rishiri, but the weather forecast is not very good, so I have pushed that adventure to the following day, which was planned as my "spare day just in case things do not go as planned" day.
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