The last nine days has seen us getting up really early every morning – for the adults, it’s been as early as 5:30AM – and routinely returning back to the hotel 8PM or later. The kids have borne up very well, all things considered, with a minimal amount of fussing and whining, mostly. In fact, they’re so doggoned tired each night that they’re zonked out in minutes after turning in. Our initial plan for Day 10 was a day trip to Noboribetsu, with a visit to the famous sulphuric vents in ‘hell valley’ in the morning, followed by a visit to the Noboribetsu Marine Park. We ended up dropping the day trip as we figured we could use a slow day after a hectic nine days. There weren’t too many places that interested us within Sapporo, so we settled for Nakajima Park, Moerenuma Park, and Sapporo Factory.
Nakajima Park is is just a minute walk away from our hotel – Vessel Inn Sapporo Nakajima Park – and our Day 05 cab driver bringing us from JR Sapporo Station to the hotel suggested we take a look at the park. The park’s central piece is a large pond – Ayame-Ike – whose surface layer had frozen, so that there was layer of snow on it. Several sets of footprints made us guess whose they were. They were clearly not human, and the frozen surface didn’t look like it could bear the weight of a human anyway. My best guess was that it was a two-legged animal, by the immediate list of two legged animals I could think of wouldn’t have produced prints like these anyway.
In any case, the park probably looks incredible in warmer seasons. In winter, it was a little dry – no pun intended – but the layers of snow on foliage and flora made for great pictures again.
We headed to the huge Moerenuma Park next!
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