Greetings everybody! Nomnomnoodle is here and today I want to continue taking you guys with me on the Hokkaido trip that I started last time. I'm very excited about the new style of a post I want to try to put out here, so please bear with me and I'm all ears for any constructive feedback.
Excuse my amateur drawing, I'm in the phase of trying to explore Procreate on Ipad. And yes, I'll be talking about the falls and a little bit about the zoo.
In the morning, I went to another Onsen before breakfast. Some would say it's too much, but hey I'm gonna make the most out of my trip here and go to as many Onsen as I can. After breakfast, we took our luggage to the car. We only stay here for a night and change hotel almost every day.
While waiting for other people's luggage, I had to take pictures of us on a snowy morning. Something we would never have in Thailand.
My outfit of the day. I wore at least 3 layers of clothes underneath that jacket. 😂
It snowed so much that even my old iPhone can still capture it.
This is my family. From left to right are my older sister, dad, mom, and me. However, until I received their consent, I'll cover them with my drawing. haha
We left the hotel and arrived at the Daisetsuzan National Park, located in the Kamikawa district of Hokkaido.
There are convenience store and a map. I heard it'd be nice to hike here too. (Well other seasons except winter, of course)
It's a competition between the clouds and the sun. So cloudy yet the sun still managed to shine through (a little) to let us know it was still in the morning.
I'm so not used to this cold and leaf-barren winter forest. Completely different vibe.
My sister is prone to feel cold (super easily) so this is her jacket/blanket to keep her body temperature. Looks like we travel with some random homeless today. 😆
The main attraction are the The Ginga Waterfall (Ginga-no-taki [銀河の滝]; Ginga Falls) and Ryusei Waterfall (Ryusei-no-taki [流星の滝]; Ryusei Falls). Some say they are twin waterfalls and others say husband and wife waterfalls.
To be honest, it's really hard to see when it's all frozen and covered by snow. If they didn't put up a sign, I don't even think we were gonna notice them.
I remember that with the Ryusei Fall, the waterfall is even though barely visible. We could still see it.
I was kinda imagining how cold it would be to put my tippy toe in that canal.
Before we left the national park, my dad spotted a deer behind the fence. Can you see it too? He ran away before I could take more pictures of him, sadly.
Then our next stop is the Asahiyama Zoo (旭山動物園, Asahiyama Dōbutsuen). We arrived there so early, it didn't allow you to go in yet. (I'll tell you later why) So we waited in this weather. Brr 😰
We got our queue and we got in. We were told that we can go walk around until it was 11.00 because there was the famously must-watch penguin walk.
I'm always happy to get to go to the zoo. I love all kinds of animals. This time is special because I get to see real-life winter animals, that I could have only seen on TV or the internet. Although it's very difficult to take pictures of them. Here are some animal photos.
If you've ever watched a Japanese cartoon, you'll probably hear about ´Tanuki´, the raccoon dog. I watched Ghibli's movie about Tanuki called Pompoko and always want to see them in real life.
Run run, fluffy 😍
Can you spot 2 Tanukis?
Then we walked to the cage of the Ezo/Ussuri brown bear or the grizzly bear.
There he is, the brown and fuzzy bear.
I'm impressed with how the layout of the cage is built. Instead of building a bar all over the cage, they built the bar half of the area, and the other half they did like an open area but use the distance to create a safe environment for both the bear and the visitors. Also, with this layout the visitors see the bear close-up like this...
...and you can see the bear walking around, without having to look through the bars, like this
Opposite the bear is the Red-crowned crane. Wow! He/she is so beautiful and didn't want to join my selfie shot.
But then when I stopped selfies, he/she was just like Who you said you were? started to pay attention to me all of a sudden.
The last animal of this post is the Timber wolf. Now, if you're like me and watched Game of Thrones, you probably understand why I called them Nymeria, Summer, and Ghost. They just looked very large (-er than I'd imagined). I can understand why they're such intimidating predators.
Most of them are sleeping cozily in the snow.
The tour of the zoo is still continuing to the next post, in which I'll tell you about the penguin show and other animals. So, if you like it, please stay tuned and let me send you off with a picture of us with the giant Gorilla statue.
If you want to check out my previous posts from Hokkaido then click the links below!
Part 1 - First time in Hokkaido in forever
Part 2 - Cheese and Wine Museum Day in Furano
Part 3 - Kamikawa Ice Pavillion
Part 4 - Perfect Day Ends with an Onsen
Khob khun kaa,
Nomnomnoodle 🍜