Muroran Japan

Remember those bears that I told you about?   Here is one of them and yes, he was a good size!

As you can see, it has been raining but still, it was a lot of fun visiting this attraction.  Doesn't this bear look Asian to you?  This area of Japan has many bears and the local craftspeople enjoy doing wood carvings of them.

We also went to Lake Toya and Mt. Usu where there is a gondola ride but since the weather was not co-operating, we did not ascend to the top.  However, we did go into the informative museum there that explained about the volcanoes in that area and how they had erupted, thus creating Lake Toya.  The last volcanic eruption was in 2000 and the turbulence lasted over five months.  In that time, it created new craters.  This area is constantly changing but it has created a tourist hub as many people visit the many spas that are now here.

We also visited what they called Valley of Hell (Jigokudani) which is similar to the geysers and mud pots that you would see in Yellowstone Park with Old Faithful.  It was a free entry attraction, nicely paved or wooden walkways, and filled with the aromatic smell of sulphur.  We were fortunate to have visited after hundreds of other tourists had visited earlier that day.

In our short time in this area of Japan, we saw quite a bit of the surroundings.  By the time we arrived back to the pier,it was dark.  So we quickly changed and went to dinner when suddenly, our cruise director Kevin Joy announced that there was a school group on the pier, ready to perform for us.  Well, you should have seen all the passengers converge on the promenade deck....it was so good and fun and of course, enjoyable for us to see these children, ranging in age from six up to their teens, performing this Japanese dance and acrobatics for us.  They were doing this in pouring rain and it was so cute and refreshing to see the little ones in the front, gaily splashing as they performed.  Wouldn't you love splashing your feet and getting your costume wet while performing in front of thousands of people, who are madly applauding your actions?  The pictures below shows you part of the large group in their beautiful costumes.

 

 

 

 

I was deeply moved seeing this group of children as it brought back memories of my own children and those that I taught.  Children do grow up too quickly, don't they?  And this group stayed to say Good Bye to us until we actually untied from the dock.  So very kind of them.  The town went out of their way all day to make us feel welcomed.  In this town there was a circular bus route (free) so many of the passengers spent the day in Muroran, just walking around and exploring and I would think some of them made some purchases!

The weather had been interesting for us on this cruise and this is what happened next:  Typhoon warning so again, the captain was forced to divert from our planned itinerary and we proceeded to head north again, away from Aomori, our port for the next day.  We were disappointed for sure as we had read and heard that Aomori was interesting to visit, especially the fresh fish market, and further out, a giant Buddha and Hiroshi Castle.  But safety comes first.

So another sea day awaited us.  Remember, we already had six so this was now day seven.  Hmm, what to do....well, pretty much what we did before, same routine etc.

After that sea day, we were in the interesting port of Vladivostock, Russia.  What awaits us there?