Golden Week 2006

	For Golden Week, Heather and I decided to save money and take a drive up the western coast of northern Hokkaido as I'd never been there before. It was a beautiful drive. Here was our first stop. You can make out Mt. Rishiri through the haze. It's actually an island up near Wakkanai.
	ANd here's the sea of dead sasa plants around the place we stopped. It was in a national park, but I forget the name.
	Here's a random monument in one of the towns we passed through on the way south.
	We actually managed to get onto the beach and touch the Sea of Japan (my first time touching it, though I'd flown over it before).
	There was a fair amount of litter and driftwood here. I'm pretty sure most of it is washed ashore, not dropped by people here as this beach is rather far from a town and difficult to get to. We had to do a bit of offroad climbing.
	Another view northwards along the coast.
	On the way back we cut inland to Nayoro through a mountain range and got some sunset shots.
	This tiny town on the mountain plateau (the actual town isn't in the shot, but really, there's not a whole lot more to it really. The town sign boasts -42.1 degrees (celsius) which I presume was the lowest recorded temperature in Japan. I wouldn't want to live here. During winter they probably have to close the roads for large chunks of time, leaving the whole town essentially isolated.
	Here's Nayoro in the evening. You can just see the lights of the town in the distance.

All images and writing on this page and other pages on this website are copyrighted by Matthew Hansen. Should you somehow have a use for any of them, you may freely use them as long as proper credit is given and they are not used for profit. A link would be nice too.