Hokkaido - day 5

In Nemuro, we were presented to the history about the islands around the peninsula. They share some of the islands with Russia and Japan is asking to give back one of them officially Japanese.

The signs in the city are also written in Russian, what shows how many Russian are around there. Every morning, Russian fish men deliver the crabs and fishes to the Japanese seafood places. We went to Hanasaki Port, where the crabs are fresh and cheap. In one of the small fish places, a lady offered us to serve a huge crab for 1,500 yens. As a lunch with crab costs at least 5,000 yens in a normal restaurant, of course we had the lunch at that small restaurant at the port.

To have an idea, we spend half an hour to eat the crab, and the body of the crab was also used to serve the local sake with crab meat. Very unique experience with crabs ^-^
The sake is also softly sweet, with the special taste of the crab, bringing a sensation that we cannot live in a country without seafood…
In the restaurant, we met people from miyazaki with so strong accent that for a second I thought it was Russian ;-)
There, the fish men told us many stories about Ainu culture, Hokkaido and the nature.
When we were ready to pay the lunch, the lady said 2,000 yens with the beers. I thought it was the price per person…. But it was in the total :D

Ready to go, and knowing we don’t need dinner, we follow the wind to the Cape Ochiishi, where we met an old photographer in a Harley, with his wife. Amazing people are in Hokkaido.

After passing through Hamanaka, we reached Kushiro Marshlands National Park. Not much time to see everything, but the main landscape was the savanna.

Driving up the mountains was not easy, because of the fog… the landscape is beautiful during the winter, so we decided to start our return to Sapporo.

At night we made a stop in Hidaka.