Still on the first weekend in November, its taking far too long to get through just three says of events. Then again that Noboribetsu update was ridiculously long. 1174 words. Fortunately this one shouldn’t be quite so bad. Now, to explain the post title - on Sunday we climbed up Usuzan, your friendly neighbourhood active volcano. And by climbed I mean we took the cable car up to the top then walked 100m to the viewpoint. Once again cursing to myself because of my lack of camera I was forced to take in the views using my eyes instead of a viewscreen. And incredible the views are, its possible to look out across in the pacific, all the way down the south coast of Hokkaido, then from the other viewpoint out over Lake Toya. A perfect opportunity for making panoramas, which I will of course post up, as no words can do the views justice, neither can pictures to be honest, but its something.
There is a whole entertainment complex built around the base station of Mt Uzu. Including a bear zoo, which was our next stop. I’ve never been to a zoo, and now that I’ve been to this one, I don’t think I want to again. I’m not normally the animal rights type, and I guess I’m still not, but the way in which the bears at this zoo are treated seems completely deplorable. Their “habitat” was nothing more than a concrete bunker, and with 8 or so full grown bears in a single bunker its not even a roomy bunker. All the bears do is sit there and eat biscuits thrown at them by visitors. It just seemed so unfitting for such an amazing animal. Even worse that there was well over 40 bears in total. I don’t think a place like this would even be legal in the UK, I really hope not. And I really hope this isn’t the norm in Japan. That pretty much put a massive damper on the rest of the day, curry ramen couldn’t even lift my spirits. Photo Album
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