Noboribetsu Onsen

Prepare yourselves blog followers - Fiona and I had a truly epic adventure yesterday so this post is going to be a long one. Pour yourself a drink and get comfy!

Near the top of my Sapporo bucket list was to take a trip to the nearby town of Noboribetsu Onsen. The pictures I came across when researching day trips from Sapporo were amazing and knowing that it was an onsen town, I wanted to try to do it before it got to hot and the idea of a hot soak no longer seemed so appealing. An onsen is a Japanese hot spring and, being that Japan is a volcanically active country, there are thousands of them across all of its islands. We got quite the geology lesson during our visit and found it all quite fascinating, so I'll share a little more here for anyone who might be interested (and to document for my aging memory...).

The water from a hot spring is heated geothermally (with heat produced from the Earth's mantle) in one of two ways: by coming into contact with hot rocks deep in the Earth's crust or by coming into contact with molten rock or magma. Because Japan is volcanically active, its onsens are heated by the later. The very high temperature gradient near is great enough that it can cause water to become superheated (heated beyond its boiling point). This can result steam pressure building below the Earth's surface to the point that it erupts in a jet called a geyser. Alternatively, water can reach the surface only as steam - this is known as a fumarole. Finally, if the water is not superheated, it can simply result in a boiling lake or pond. Norboribetsu Onsen was fascinating to see because (among many other interesting sites) it had examples of all three of these types of vocalnically heated water.

Traditionally, Japanese onsens are used as public bathing places occurring as indoor or outdoor baths that may be either publicly run, part of a hotel, or found in nature. In Japan, there are legal definitions for classifying a hot spring as an onsen. These include the fact that it must contain one of 19 designated chemical elements (e.g. iron, sulfur, etc.) and that it must be 77 degrees F or warmer at the  point of release. Noboribetsu Onsen has nine different kinds of water containing minerals including sulfur, salts, and iron. The quality of these minerals results in its ranking as one of Japan's most famous onsen towns with many local hotels offering daily onsen use to visitors. Fiona and I discussed visiting one during our time there but ran out of time and weren't sure we were ready to embrace the naked requirement for entering an onsen. Maybe next time...

We boarded a train at Sapporo's JR station early yesterday morning and after a little over an hour arrived at the Noboribetsu station. From there we boarded a bus that took us 15 minutes up a windy mountain road to Noboribetsu Onsen. There we greeted by two of the town's oni (this translates to demon). They are said to be good demons who guard protect the precious hot spring waters.

From there we visited the Sengen geyser which we were both sufficiently impressed with. It was certainly not anything close to Old Faithful, but it was the first geyser either of us have ever seen and its could of vapors we had to descend into added to the experience.

After leaving the geyser, it was just another five minutes walk until we reached the entrance to the Jigoku Valley - its name literally translates to Hell Valley, and I think the pictures probably give you a good idea of how it got its name. The valley is the explosion crater of Mt. Kuttara - a roughly quarter mile diameter mouth of a volcano - which produces 800 gallons of hot water PER MINUTE!! This place was just wild. Please excuse the barrage of pictures, but they truely do a lot more justice to the place than my words ever could.

Note that these warning signs are giving the temperature of the water in degrees C! That means, depending on which language you read the warning in, the water is going to be between 140 - 190 degrees F!

Behind us in the picture above, you can see the boardwalk that has been constructed to allow you to walk out into the center of the valley. Below is the steam that rises off of Tessen-Ike (Lake Tessen). It is located at the center of the valley and has a geyser that sporadically erupts.

After taking in our fill of the amazing views of Jigoku Valley, we hiked on toward Oyunuma and Mt. Hiyori.

Mt. Hiyori (peak at the right of the picture) is an active volcano that frequently emits smoke from the top (as was doing during our visit yesterday). The mountain was given its name (which translates to Mt. Weather) due to a fisherman who used to forecast the weather based on how much smoke he saw coming from the mountain. His forecast - much smoke means bad weather is on the way.

At the base of Mt. Hiyori is Oyunuma, a hot spring pond fed by a nearly 270 degree F sulfur spring at the bottom. The surface temperature of the pond ranges between 104 and 122 degrees F.

The views of Mt. Hiyori and Oyunuma certainly did not disappoint, even after just coming from Jigoku Valley.

Starting at Oyunuma is this stream which our hike followed to our next destination...

...the Noboribetsu foot soak! I can't begin to explain how amazingly serene this place was.

Spa day, Japan-style!

Ever the explorer...

I declined the invitation to join the exploration in favor of some more relaxing!

Meanwhile, this girl was DETERMINED to get soaked. She kept begging to swim in the shallow stream but settled for some antics that got her as drenched as possible without taking an actual swim.

After a nice, long foot soak, we got (mostly) dried off and continued our hike to our next stop. Along the way, we passed dozens and dozens of these small statues seemingly wearing bibs... We never did find out what they represented and why they were all bibbed, but they were fun to watch for!

Finally, we reached the rope way (gondola) that would take us to the Noboribetsu Bear Park.

On the way up, we had amazing views of the winding road we'd taken to get to Noboribetsu Onsen. If you look closely, you can see portions of the road are red. This - I assume - was as a stern warning to drive with care as the road hugged the edge of the mountain so tightly that there was nothing but a sheer drop off protected by a small guardrail as the road rounds certain parts of the mountains.

I'm not sure what I was expecting to find when we got to the bear park, but I have to say it was pretty eye-opening. On one hand, it was a little sad because the conditions the bears were kept in didn't look all that luxurious. But seeing the brown bears up close was nothing like I'd imagined. They were HUGE. You hear all kinds of statistics about how big bears are, but I've never actually seen one up close. WOW! The females were all kept together in one enclosed and there were a dozen or more of them together in one area.

Several of the more "vocal" of the bunch would stand up on their hind legs and literally clap their paws and growl at the people above who had bear treats in their hands. Once they had someone's attention and saw a treat headed their way, more often than not they'd catch it in their mouths mid-air.

After seeing the females, we moved over to the male enclosure. YIKES! The female bears looked tiny by comparison.

This guy really enjoyed stretching his head against the corner of the "human cage" (more on that soon). I just missed getting him standing at full height, but when he was, he was taller than this roughly 10 foot encounter he's backed up too. HUGE!

Next we went down into the "human cage," an enclosed area that allowed us to get face to face with the bears while feeding them. There were long pipes through the walls of the enclosure that we could load with large bear buiscuts and then force them out to the waiting bears. They clearly understood this practice well because - as you can see below - they would put their mouth over the opening in the pipe and wait for food to be delivered.

After finishing one treat, they'd look up to see if we had more and stare at the bag until we started loading another:

And then check our supply again:

The most amazing part was that this guy recognized after Fiona had delivered our last buicut that we didn't have any more (without even looking back to check) and was already on his way to another snack deliverer as he chewed up our last treat.

After we finished feeding the bears, we walked out of the human cage just in time to hear what soundsed like an exciting announcement set to peppy music so we hurried over to check out what we were missing. 

Duck race! Obviously! What else would it be at a bear park? First they paraded the ducks around and solicited bets to be placed on which duck would win the race:

Once all bets were in, they were loaded into the starting box:

And then they were off!

What, you might wonder, does someone who bets on the winning duck win? Lucky for you, I witnessed the prize delivery - a five inch by five inch cloth with a picture of a duck on it!

The other reason for visiting the bear park is the amazing views it offers of  Lake Kuttara, a caldera lake. A caldera is a cauldron-like void that forms when large volumes of magma are erupted over a short period of time. Their formation is fascinating to read about - pull up the Wikipedia article if you're so inclined, but I won't bore you with any more geology in this post. The lake is over five miles around and is famous for being the second clearest lake in Japan with an underwater visibility of nearly 93 feet due to the fact that it has no rivers or streams flowing in or out.

The lake was absolutely beautiful, and I'm dying to visit it. Our plan for the day actually included a hike in for lunch by the lake, but the woman at the tourist information center informed me that "there are bears out there!" After seeing some of said bears up close, any plans of a hike to the lake quickly disappeared. I think we'll opt for the safer option of perhaps renting a car and driving to it at some point before we leave.

On our way out of the park, we spotted this. We chose to replace the words New York with Boston in our minds and gave a big wave to all our friends back home we're missing so much. You're just 7300 miles on the other side of Lake Kuttara...

Finally we took the short gondola ride back down to catch the bus.

And said our goodbyes to the oni at the train station.

And were on our way back to Sapporo, two VERY exhausted ladies!

As an aside: I see these often when we're out and am fascinated the fact that this is something that can work in the Japanese culture. They are a sort of communal umbrella. Have you found yourself out without protection from the rain? Here, take an umbrella! Just return it to another umbrella deposit somewhere in town. Isn't it great that something as simple as this can actually work here? I love it!