After a quick dip in the hotspring and a nice breakfast, we took a walk to the hill behind the cottage with the owner’s dog.
Beautiful Lake Mashu(摩周湖)
Second softcream from Kurimu Douwa(くりーむ童話).
標津ホタテ祭り。
Scallop festival at Shibetsu.
Strawberry milk.
Shame that it was freezing that day and everything got cold really quickly.
Imo-mochi(potato cake).
You need to get a ticket in advance in order to have one go at scooping the giant scallops to take home, but one of the staff saw me looking probably a little sad and handed me a bag secretly! Yipee!
Read about todowara in Notsuke Peninsula here and here.
Kuma-no-yu hotspring(熊の湯). It is free and it is not mix-gender.
Stayed in a cheap(4800yen with two meals included) but very good hostel called Toomawari(とおまわり) in Rausu(羅臼). The owner is a salmon fisherman and dinner is cooked by him. The fish “kinki” is so delicious!
The owner was kind enough to prepare the big scallops from the scallop festival for us. The little ones are included in the dinner.
The deep-fried seafood came one by one but I was just too full to eat any of them so they just accumulated…
We chatted and drank with the owner and his very funny fisherman friend and other people staying in the hostel til really late. Very nice place to stay!
Catching up (so busy this week~) The lake photos looked unreal…so ethereal. How nice of them to give you the bag of giant scallops (when you got them did you expect the hostel you’re gonna stay would cook it for you? ^^:;)
That hotspring looks like a little shack from the outside… I like that you stayed in these small family owned bed & breakfast type of place, they feel so much more intimate and personal.
My friend who organised the trip has stayed in the hostel before and sort of knows the owner so she was sure there would be no problem. It was a big big bag of huge huge scallops and three of us wouldn’t be able to finish it anyway, so we shared with other people staying in the hostel that night and also gave the leftover to the owner.
The free hotspring looks shabby outside but it is very clean and well-maintained inside! Local people help to clean and manage the place voluntarily. Actually me and my friend were careless and got the changing space a little wet and immediately got scolded by some obasan quite harshly….ToT