Kushiro Day Two

Our first full day in Kushiro started off with a buffet breakfast at our hotel. Buffets--especially hotel buffets--are best avoided back home but I'm a big fan of the Japanese breakfast buffet, and this one was particularly good. It even had a robata-yaki section, robata-yaki being the charcoal-grilled seafood and vegetables that Kushiro is famous for.

We needn't have eaten such a huge breakfast, however, as lunch came soon after. We had driven to Furen-ko, a brackish lake in Nemuro (at the easternmost point of mainland Hokkaido) and stopped at a michi no eki (rest area) overlooking the lake. The view was beautiful but as I assumed we were going to the lake afterward I didn't take any pictures, which is a shame because we went to another of the lake which looked completely different. I did snap pictures of lunch though:

I had zangi teishoku (fried chicken lunch special). I've been obsessed with zangi since I first tried it in Nayoro on a previous trip to Hokkaido. That stuff was just wonderful, made with very large chunks of boneless chicken thigh that had a thick crunchy coating on the outside and incredibly juicy flesh on the inside, strongly flavoured with soy sauce, ginger and garlic. It was some of the best fried chicken I've ever had, and, assuming that all zangi was like that I was really looking forward to trying more on this trip. But it turns out that zangi is simply the Hokkaido word for kara-age (fried chicken) and that it comes in as many varieties as it does in the rest of Japan. The zangi I had this time around was perfectly ordinary kara-age, and although it was good I couldn't help but be disappointed that it wasn't giant chunks of highly flavoured chicken like I'd had before. I guess I'll have to go back to Nayoro if I really want to have what I think of as "zangi" again.

Hideaki bravely ordered the specialty of Nemuro: esukaroppu. This is a dish that has little to do with the French "escalope" it's named after (which means a morsel of food cut into a fillet or cutlet; this is the word from which we get our "scalloped" potatoes). The description of the dish horrified us: butter rice topped with tonkatsu (deep-fried pork cutlet) and covered with demi-glace sauce. Each of which I happen to like on their own but were never meant to be served together. It turned out that the description was worse than the dish itself: it wasn't nearly as greasy as we expected and the flavours kind of went well together. We were assured that this was a fancified tourist version and that the real deal was much greasier though, so maybe authentic esukaroppu is as nasty as I first imagined.

Furen-ko is right on the coast, separated from the Sea of Okhotsk by just a couple of sand spits. The southern spit is called Shunkunitai and is home to diverse habitats including mudflats, grassy fields, sandy shoreline and mossy forest. This is where we went after lunch.

After parking our car we walked along the sand spit toward the forest. The landscape was rather dreary at this time of year, but the wetlands are home to plenty of birds and the nearby forest home to ezoshika, the species of deer unique to Hokkaido, as well as foxes and bears. We immediately saw plenty of gulls, ducks and kites, like the one below, but what we really wanted to see were the deer and tancho (red-crested crane), Japan's national bird (dangerously endangered and very hard to see in the rest of the country).

I can imagine that this place would be just gorgeous in the summer, as well as much more hospitable: it was freezing cold and the strong wind cut through my winter coat and layers of warm clothes. But there was something beautiful about the colourless, desolate landscape, and I was glad to see it in the winter.

  

As we entered the forest the atmosphere changed completely, along with the climate: the wind disappeared and I found myself loosening my scarf and unzipping my coat to avoid overheating. The dead grey trees turned into live Sakhalin spruces (this being one of two forests in the world which the trees are found) and the forlorn beige grass became a lush carpet of moss. It had an enchanted forest quality about it, and although I'd love to see this place in the summer when the moss is even greener, I thought it was just lovely as it was. I really liked the contrast of the fresh, soft moss and the green of the spruce needles with the dead and dead-looking grey tree trunks.

We never did see deer, but there was plenty of evidence of them: their poop was all over the place, in muddy areas we saw their tracks, and several of their paths cut through the forest, as above.

The moss is vital to the forest, as the ground underneath it is soft sand that by itself could never support these trees. The moss grows over the sand in an endless mat, feeding on the moisture in the air and ground (this place was very humid) until thick enough to support trees. The moss holds water and nutrients for the trees and supports their shallow roots, but as the moss is not very thick the support is somewhat limited, and the trees seem to fall over rather easily. On our short walk into the forest we passed over a dozen downed trees.

The trees make an ideal home for lichen, of which there seemed to be three varieties (in addition to the two types above there was a wispy greenish Spanish moss-like type). Sadly I know even less about lichens than I do about moss so I can't identify them, but they certainly added to the fairy tale sort of beauty of the place.

Above is a felled tree, giving a good view of its shallow roots. In the space under the trees the moss was ripped away with the roots and all that is left is sand, giving a simple demonstration of how this ecosystem works. If it weren't for these downed trees I'd never be able to imagine that this whole lush forest is built on sand.

In marshier areas of the forest mizubasho (skunk cabbage) flourished. It's such a pretty flower that can only be seen in pristine marshy areas, so needless to say I've never seen it in Tokyo.

Other wildflowers included this hime-ichige (Anemone debilis) and the violet below, which appears to be of the tachitsubo-sumire variety.

While I was keeping my eyes to the ground, Hideaki and his brother happened to look up and were treated to the sight of a halo around the sun. Also known as an icebow, this is a rare phenomenon that I've been lucky enough to see several times, most recently on Oshima last year. I wonder if perhaps it's not so rare after all, it's just that so few people bother to look up?

Back out into the wetlands we saw plenty of animal tracks, including the crane tracks above. We were obliged to walk on a wooden boardwalk so I couldn't get close enough to the tracks to add something to the picture to show scale, but these were quite large--as big as my hand, at least. We had given up on seeing any cranes and assumed this was as close as we'd get, so we felt a bit dejected.

And then as we were walking back to our car a pair flew almost right over us. The were completely silent and very very fast, so by the time I saw them they were already past us and when I finally got my camera ready they were way off in the distance. The picture above does nothing to capture how beautiful they were, nor how gracefully they flew. They were just majestic and although we were to see several more on our trip this was the only time we were lucky enough to see them in flight.

On our way home we stopped at a place called Farm Designs for another ice cream. This stuff was also very good and caused an intense debate, with Hideaki preferring this one and me preferring yesterday's slightly smoother version. I think he was just swayed by the cookie, but it really was a close call. I guess it's hard to find bad ice cream in Japan.

On the way out I stopped to admire the sign, which featured--why not--a holstein wearing sunglasses. And then I noticed an even better sign, shown here on the left: a neon depiction of a pink whale making love to a giant of Corona, complete with a lime slice. Because really, nothing says ice cream like a randy whale with a fetish for oversized bottles of crappy beer.

Back at my brother-in-law's house we had another feast. The two types of fish above are hokke (apparently called atka mackerel in English, not that I've ever seen it outside Japan) and tokishirazu (a type of salmon), both special to Hokkaido. Hokke is one of my favourite fish so it was a treat to have it, and the tokishirazu was also good but we didn't actually get around to eating it that day, so more on that in the next post.

We also had asparagus and two types of small fish: shishamo (smelt), caught off of Kushiro and komai (saffron cod) caught in Furen-ko.

And more of the clams we'd picked up the day before.

All of the food was slowly cooked over charcoal at the table, a method of cooking my brother in law uses nearly every night (yes, he makes sure the windows are open).

The clams were grilled until they popped open and eaten as-is, the delicious meat inside needing no flavouring.

I wasn't prepared to be impressed by the shishamo, because we eat it fairly often in Tokyo and prefer the komochi (egg-bearing) variety, and this had no eggs at all. But this shishamo was soft and juicy like I'd never had it before, and had me thinking that what I'd been eating up until now was an entirely different species of fish. Eggs were a poor substitute for plain old good fish, and I wish I could find shishamo like this back home.

The meal finished with my brother-in-law's special ikuradon (rice topped with salmon roe). Rather than simply top rice with ikura, he first mixes the roe with daikon oroshi (grated daikon) and tops it with shiso (perilla). The result is lighter and fresher tasting than regular ikuradon, and a very nice way to finish a meal.

More pictures of the trip can be seen here.

Comments

[Hanna]

Oh, I just love to read your posts! You are such a good writer and it's all so very interesting. I just can't get enough of Japanese food and culture.

[june2]

The meal at your brother in law's looks sooo good! He eats very well, it seems. Also, the neon whale sign is just bafflingly hilarious - ?!? ha ha...

[june2]

Oh, and love the mix of food and nature! So fun and informative.

[T.A]

Yep. Most of the fish sold as 'shishamo' are actually not shishamo;if you make your own researches, you will find that they are different kinds. It's quite fortunate that you had the real shishamo there. It sure tastes different!

[japanese words]

Lol. I know what you mean about the food. I feel like I am always fool. Soft cream however, I can't get enough of. Great pictures!

[Nate]

That's some kind of meals!

[Heather Meadows]

I want to eat everything in this post! Great pictures!

Your brother-in-law's ikuradon is especially intriguing to me. I'd like to try it his way. Does that make it less salty?

[JoeInVegas]

Wow, again beautiful pictures of nice places. Thank you.

[Katie]

Tonkatsu is delicious - one of our favourite meals while in Japan. The spread of dishes makes me really miss the detail and presentation of food we ate over there. We both want to go back soon and your blog is making me miss it even more! :P