Utoro - Rausu - Abashiri (continuation) The drive back to Abashiri was prety much uneventful. Mainly because I was sleeping most of the time. :P The times I were awake I saw horses. Reminds me that many restaurants offer horse sashimi over there. Also saw tractors and farm machinery at work. It's a sunny Monday afternoon after all.

Reached Abashiri around 3pm and instead of the deserted town, we started to see some resemblence to a big town. Actually the place where we stayed, around the JR station area, is not really the center of the town. Hence that was why we couldn't find much dining outlets at night. Anyway our destination was the famous Abashiri Prison Museum. Abashiri is famous for its high security and harsh prison ever since the early 1900s(?). Can you imagine the winters there? Neither can I.

The prison museum is actually the site of the old prison in the mountain region. The new prison is at the flatlands. We parked our car and was unpleasantly surprised again that it costs around Y1000 to go in! The only bad thing about Jap is that you usually need to pay to go in anywhere, even temples (hence their priests go around in Mercedes'). Yeah it was kinda expensive so we decided to check out the omiyage shop instead. A common theme throughout Jap is the abundance of omiyage. Here we saw t-shirts and even red bean cakes with the title of the prison. -_-" The most common omiyage in Jap must be red bean cakes!


The exit of the museum is conveniently located beside the souvenir shop. And as can be seen from the photo below, it isn't guarded nor gated. So if you put one plus one together, you can imagine what we did. Anyway it was my idea, KS wasn't too keen but still he joined me eventually :P How ironic... considering this used to be a prison.


The museum compound itself is rather big. Many sections with different purposes. For instance there is the bathing area, solitary confinement, chapel, cells, etc. Very informative if you can read Jap. Unfortunately I don't.



Left soon after as it was closing soon. I took over the wheel this time and headed to the drift ice museum. Another famous thing about Abashiri is the drift ice. During the thick of winter you can take a cruise to the sea to see chunks of ice floating around. The museum needed entry fee as usual so we skipped it and went up the free observatory instead. Wow... really spectacular views of the surroundings as the whole place was up the mountain. It really gives me a perspective of how big the world is. Can see the full 360 degree view of the sky. The wind was really strong up there though. Literally strong enough to shake me from head to toe. We can also see the Abashiri lake and the new prison there.





Next we went to find the Abashiri park. Took us some time to find it as it wasn't really well signboarded. Turned out it was kind of like East Coast Park over here in Singapore instead of a flowery kind of park. Got playgrounds, cycling tracks, basketball courts that kinda thing. So we didn't stay there and proceeded back to return our car. We first went to pump the car full of petrol. First time at a Jap petrol station. Wah the service was 101% lor. You just wind down your window and tell them you want to fill 'em up and they will do the rest and wiped the windscreen with burning passion. When we were pulling out, this female attendant gestured to us to show us the way out. Even to the point of running and literally "showing" us the way. Kind of like how the ground crew at the airport gestures to the pilot. Only in Japan.

And then... back to the Mazda car rental where to cut the long story short, I paid Y20000 for the damages. Then back again to Pension Lamp and the uncle said in funny English: Ah its you again! Haha...

Put down our stuff and off we go in search of dinner. There was actually quite a distance to walk to the restaurants area. Maybe around 20mins from the JR station. Oh yeah, in every part of Hokkaido (and probably Japan) there are brochures advertising the restaurants of that place. And most of the time there will be discount coupons in it. In fact, it isn't restricted to just restaurants. You can find discounts for museums, rides, etc. So its a good idea to check out the tourist center or similar places when you first arrive. We settled for this izakaya called Kita Tori which offered 5% discount and a free dish of some dunno what cheesy tempura. Started our meal with some cold nihon-shu (known as sake outside Japan) and the compulsory appetizer of cold pasta. All izakayas offer you a compulsory appetizer usually costing around Y200 per person. Basically we had all the food below plus grilled pork fat and salmon ochazuke (green tea poured over rice) for me and cold ramen served soba style for KS. It was really hard to order as the menu was all in Jap. We ordered those dishes which we had an idea of what it is. The yakitori was really chunky and meaty with onions in between. The pork was equally flavorful. The chicken skin also did not disappoint. It was very crispy and superb. Believe me, the Japs know how to grill it perfectly. Originally I ordered the pork fat with the idea that it was pork belly meat. But turned out to be just grilled pork fat. Wow... trust me, I have never eaten pork fat as delicious as this in Singapore. Grilled until it was crunchy. I had a glass of umeshu and KS a beer to top it off. Oiishi! Dinner added up to around Y3000 per person. Reasonable for an izakaya.



After dinner we saw a pachinko place and KS was kinda hyped up. Turned out everyone was playing on the jackpot machines instead (called slots there). But the minimum amount to play is Y1000 and that kinda doused KS's enthusiasm. Oh well... I was equally enthusiastic about pachinko in my first time. After that we stopped at Lawson's (a kombini) just beside the JR station to stock up on some milk. Hey, it's Hokkaido after all.

  F-ed by me at 8:26 AM

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