Asahikawa: The Land of Traffic Lights

I swear this city has a traffic light every 87 feet, no matter which direction you travel. Google will show traffic as orange when you are the only car on the road due to having to stop at a traffic light every 28 seconds. Asahikawa is the second largest city in Hokkaido (300k vs 3 million population compared to Sapporo), but not an overnight on the standard tourist trail. We are spending 3 nights here, partly as a base to see things in the surrounding area.

The pure joy on Rose’s face while riding the horse was worth the wait. Probably more adults wanted to be led around in the horse than kids. Archer wasn’t interested.

After we picked up our rental car we went to a horse farm. It turns out this was a giant production of a horse farm, tour buses, multiple parking lots, about 10X larger than I thought the operation would be. It was mainly a Japanese crowd, a combination of Hokkaido and the better climate being an escape from the rest of Japan, most people live in large cities here and horses are a novelty, and it is a holiday week (likely the busiest week of the summer).

A year ago it would have been hard to get Archer to stand in front of the pole “alone” to watch the pony show. I left at the beginning to get in the ~45 minute line for Rose to ride the horse.

Katy then took her first driving stint of the trip since she got on the car rental agreement, and 2 hours later we were in Asahikawa. She discovered our first traffic circle in Japan. It is rather confusing, at one area people in the circle seem to yield, at another there seems to be a traffic light? in the circle, there are no lane dividers. It seems to have taken the advantages of a traffic circle and thrown them away.

We discovered a food hallish area. Archer had a bacon cheeseless burger, Rose had ramen (this city specializes in a soy sauce broth that is thicker and creamier than many in the US with some oil on top, I had a curry, and Katy had ???. There was a brewery and a tea shop that made alcoholic beverages from their tea. There was an area for the kiddos to get some wiggles out.

We went out for breakfast at a place that serves the Japanese style soufflé pancakes (they take 20+ minutes to eat). This was single butter option, you could get double butter, I can’t imagine. Archer and I got our beverages promptly, but Katy and Rose did not get theirs. I went to the iPad and discovered Katy had clicked she wanted their drinks after the meal. Oops, I guess that is what happens when haven’t had your coffee yet.

This area is known for their flower fields so our first step was a busy farm that also had alpacas. We got 3 bowls of carrots and the alpacas were still very hungry. You weren’t allowed to feed the 3 babies

Rose got a new tshirt which she will only wear backwards since the big picture is on the backside.

We drove further south to Furano Cheese Factory which is known for their chees flavored ice cream and pizza. Well, the pizza had a 90 minute wait so we passed and decided to just ice cream. Katy went with cheese and the kids went with vanilla. They didn’t eat most of their ice cream

We then went to a Ferris wheel that we passed earlier. This is a less stopped at tourist attraction and we had a lot of fun

The place had a rather large selection of ice cream. The bottom is a local beery, Haskap, from a honeysuckle shrub. It tastes pretty close to a blueberry. The green one is muscat grape and was a winner. I thought it was much better than the berry.

We then went to the Mega Donki. It is kind of like Walmart but with much more stimulation. We bought treats, real food, sleep undies, some clothes, and Rose finally melted down. To be honest, she lasted ~12 hours from when we left the house this morning, and she was toast. She ate some noodles and went to bed. I went out for a few minutes and had some ramen for late night dinner and a beer at a craft brewery place. Katy had some peace and quiet.

Our second day in Asahikawa was zoo day at the “best” zoo in Japan. We got there as they were opening, and it was a good zoo.

The hippo enclosure was boring from the outside but indoors there was the most active hippo swimming and walking around with the floor being glass so you could see him from below. It was a good enclosure with air conditioning as a bonus. It was getting hot.

The leopard was roaming on the part of the walkway you could walk under, it was super cool. Although, a little nerve racking due to her propensity for peeing on guests down below.

After the zoo we went to the ramen village, which is 7-8 ramen shops all in one spot. It turns out it was right near some of the shopping places that Katy wanted to hit up. There was also a Toys R Us there, so I took the kiddos there. Rose picked a doll, and Archer a zombie toy. The prices of the clearance items were really good. We then went to two ramen restaurants. We haven’t had tonktonsu ramen yet on this trip.

Someone fell asleep with their doll in their arms

I put Rose to bed and Katy and Archer went out and discovered a block party and had some ice cream. They only got lost a few times. I then went out and had a beer and discovered fireworks. Katy was able to watch them from the second floor bedroom.

When I got back, we sussed out some stops for the next day, and I decided I was hungry, so I had Uber Eats bring me an assortment of tuna sushi for $10, and it was at our door 20 minutes later.

I am writing some of this from the car as Katy is currently shopping for face stuff and a second additional bag. This trip has been a Katy shopping trip for sure. Food is cheap (most meals $6-$12 per person), lodging is more expensive, and a lot of goods are cheap. Making $60k/year makes you a top 5% earner and $120k/year is top 1%. The average male salary is ~50% higher than female. The average household income is $34k/year. This is part of why Japan has had huge tourism increases, the depressed yen makes it cheaper to travel here than in the past. Now, you can spend as much money as you want, but you don’t need to and can still get great food.

Archer salmon nigiri count: lost count, continues to be his main staple

Ice cream flavors tried: chocolate, chocolate mint, milk, vanilla, cheese, haskap, muscat, melon, salty melon, spirulina, soybean flour, red bean, matcha mint, matcha