Have I ever mentioned that heat in hotels is a major pain? Overheated again last night. And woke up with the sun at 3:45. Grunt.
Bit of a slow start. I headed out a bit before nine to withdraw some money and pick up some supplies for breakfast.
So didn't get out of the hotel til a bit after ten.
Headed up to the Asahiyama Zoo, quite a good little zoo outside of Asahikawa. The enclosures for the penguins and seals (and other animals too) are well thought out and you get some *great* views of the animals. For the penguins there's a tube you walk right through their tank, like the sharks at Darling Harbour. And the seals have this vertical tube they dive through right in the middle of this room you walk through. Sometimes they stop in mid flight and nose the perspex, so there's all these people in a room with a seal floating the middle! Extremely cool!!
Stu at the entrance of Asahiyama Zoo
Flamingos
King penguins
Penguin
Stu in the penguin house
Humboldt penguin
Humboldt penguins
King penguin
Seal feeding
Seal feeding
Seal feeding
Seal swimming
Seal hanging out in the middle of the room
Seal hanging out in the middle of the room
Seal hanging out in the middle of the room
Amphibians
Amphibians
The polar bears looked a little miserable in the heat (or maybe they were just bored). Only gripe about viewing them was you queue for ages in a dark stairwell for who knows what. Turns out there's a little "bubble" you can stick your head up in the middle of their enclosure. OK but not really worth waiting in the heat.
Polar bear skeleton and taxidermy
Polar bear
Polar bear
Polar bear
Polar bear
But yeah otherwise a great day and took over four hundred photos in four hours.
Clouded leopard
Stu with deer antlers
Japanese crane
Chimpanzees
Chimpanzees
Monkeys
Monkeys
Giraffe
Giraffe
Giraffe
Albino pelicans
Emu!
Capybara
Siberian chipmunk
Ural owl
Ring-tailed lemur
Orangutan
White-handed gibbon
Helmeted guineafowl
Epic azalea bush
Seal
Tiger
Lion
Bear
Then Japan took another opportunity to completely rip us off. We needed to get to Chitose airport, so programmed the GPS with either the back roads or the expressways. The expressways were 30km longer but a bit quicker, and it quoted us 2250 yen, according to the GPS for the tolls. OK so we did that. And then got quite disappointed that the speed limits on the expressways were 80 km/h .. ???? I thought they were meant to be 100. The road certainly would have handled it. But all the signs we saw said 80. Now it *might* have been that the 80 was only for temporary stuff, like lanes merging in, and the default limit was 100. But if that was the case it certainly wasn't obvious. Give me Australian speed indicators any day (which always make it clear what the speed limit should be when it changes). And give me Australian traffic lights too - everywhere else I've seen doesn't have nearly enough lights. Sometimes in Japan there's *one* light, which is pretty easy to miss. Europe was pretty bad too - there's nothing on the far side of the intersection, so pedestrians can't see what's being shown to the traffic coming. Anyway, where was I? Oh, Japan ripping us off again. The expressway from Asahikawa to Sapporo cost us 3800 yen!!! That's like $50 for 100km of road. Absolutely ridiculous. And for not much time saving either! We should have taken the back roads!!! Blah :(:(
Nagayama Bridge
Sun shining through the clouds
Route E5 (Hokkaido Expressway)
But got out to the airport car rental place without any other dramas (filling up with petrol near the airport at a full service petrol station). Returned the car, and got their shuttle bus to the airport.
From there we just needed to find the airport hotel where we were staying the night. It's right in the domestic terminal which is pretty easy. Sadly no view of the planes from our side of the hotel.
Our room at the airport hotel
Checked in, then went down to the airport food court to get some dinner and watch the planes while we ate. They even have free wifi! Win!
Then back to do photo stuff and blog.
Distance covered on the GPS: 209.4 km
Steps walked: 11793
Photos on the Canon: 406
Photos on the Sony: 26
Videos: 4