Tokyo Junction: Day 4, Shikotsu Lake

Location: Sapporo, Hokkaido
Weather: COLD! -7 deg
Author: Chrissie

Ohayou! Today's post should be a shortish one. We made plans today to meet up with Yuri and her boyfriend Taka who planned to take us to see the light illumination festival at Lake Shikotsu. Lakes Shikotsu and Toya are contained within a National Park and are famous for their beauty, onsen and volcanoes. It has become quite a tourist area, with lots of huge hotels alongside the lakes.

We were to meet up at Megumino station, about a 40 min train ride from Sapporo station at about 2pm, so we decided to do a little bit of shopping and have lunch before leaving. Just bentou for me for lunch. I think Amy had some gyozas and a donut. We were really mindful of having gone a bit beyond our budget the day before, so to make up for it we decided to have something simple.

Anyway, we got to Megumino station with no dramas. It was absolutely freezing cold as soon as we stepped off the train, much colder than in Sapporo city! Yuri was already waiting just beyond the ticket gates when we saw her. Poor Taka was waiting outside in the car and was to be our chauffeur for the day. The light illuminations only started at night, so we had some time to waste. Yuri took us around to a few clothing shops like UniQlo which is known for its affordable clothing and Rera, a HUGE HUGE open air branded factory outlet. We spent some time looking around, but didn't end up buying anything as the clothes were still pretty pricy. Maybe after I win lotto I'll come back one day.

Since Amy and I weren't really in a position to blow our wallets, we decided to visit an onsen instead. Yuri wanted to take us to a famous onsen near Lake Shikotsu, but it was closed to public visitors by then. So we ended up going to a Sento instead. A sento is slightly different to an onsen in that the hot water is artifically heated rather than originating from a natural hot spring. The men and women's bathing area was naturally separated, so Taka had to go his separate way by himself, but apparently he's used to it because Yuri loves going to onsens.

There were a few customs we had to follow while in an onsen/sento. We weren't allowed to bring in a towel, except a small face towel to scrub ourselves with. We also had to thoroughly wash ourselves before entering any of the baths and once in the baths, the small towel we brought in is not allowed to touch the bath waters (my guess is for hygiene reasons but I'm not sure). So we ended up having to place our towels on our heads, like how you see in japanese/korean dramas!!

After washing ourselves, we spent 15 minutes in a low temperature sauna to relax ourselves before entering the outdoor baths. As you can guess, the outdoor baths are situated outside and exposed to the elements, so it was a bit of a mad dash from the warmth of the indoor baths to the outdoor ones. There were 3 different outdoor baths and we had a soak in all three. The first was about 35 deg and contained waters that actually came from a natural hotspring. The second was a herbal bath which smelt a lot like the chinese herbal medicines we grew up with and the third was infused with the hinoki, a type of tree which gives off a really nice fragrance.

We were so warm from the sento that we didn't even feel the cold after we stepped back out and started the drive towards Lake Shikotsu. The next couple of hours are not really worth mentioning. There was a LONG traffic jam to Lake Shikotsu. I guess everyone had the same idea as us that night and the jam was due to the lack of parking available at the lake. It took us 2 hours to travel about 5 km.

We did eventually reach Shikotsu Lake and the first thing you felt was the cold. I think this was the coldest I've ever felt since being in Hokkaido and much of it was wind chill. We traversed a lot of icy paths to reach the site of the illuminations. Here are a few pics.