Lake Toya and Furano/Biei, Hokkaido

Well, that was a lovely relaxing holiday!  I went up to Hokkaido for a few days - one night at Lake Toya and 3 nights in Furano.  I was really lucky with the weather too - it didn't rain as much as it was forecast to, and so I was able to get a day and a half of cycling in which was what I had planned.

 Lake Toya was beautiful, although a bit too onsen resorty for my liking.  But I wanted to see fireworks and see em I did!  Breakfast and dinner were also great.  I stayed in the Hotel Lakeside Terrace and had arranged the free (2.5hour) shuttle bus both ways - excellent value, as was the hotel (booked on Rakuten) with a huge healthy buffet breakfast and dinner.  The hotel was also huge, built in 3 wings - the dining hall alone probably seated about 300 people at a time.

It was wonderful to see Furano in June, the flower fields were beautiful.  Even so I was still a little early for the lavender - mid-July is probably the best time, but end-June was when I had my holiday.  It was beautiful cycling around the Biei countryside.  There is a great rental bike shop 'Guide no Yamagoya ガイドの山小屋' near Bibaushi station (美馬牛 Beautiful Horse Cow?!), ask at the station for directions, or check online at www.yamagoya.jp (website appears in English, but many of the links have English as well.  It cost me 1500yen for a full day hire of a 7gear mountain bike.  Cheaper bikes are available but don't have any gears which would make those hills quite tricky!  They also lent me a rucksack and have left luggage facilities too.

The previous day I hired a bike from a souvenir shop just on the corner near Furano Station.  Again they have left luggage facilities if people need it.  I then spent half a day visiting the Cheese Factory, Wine Factory and Grape Factory.  In the afternoon, expecting rain, I took the bike back and caught the train to the seasonal station Lavender Batake to go to Farm Tomita.  Very nice to see again.  This is perhaps the most famous lavender farm in the area, probably partly because it's the easiest to get to, however I was much more impressed with the scale of the fields and mountain backdrop at the Hill of Shikisai about 3km from Bibaushi station.

On my final day, I took the bus to Asahikawa to see Asahiyama Zoo (last went there 6 years ago, and they are still making changes.  This is the best zoo I've ever been to, their vision being to make life as comfortable and interesting for the animals as is possible in a zoo which in turn make it as interesting as possible for the people that visit.  Little by little they are redesigning the animal areas, however the areas for very large animals haven't been redesigned yet.  This is an amazing turnaround for a zoo that in 1995 was near bankruptcy and close to closing down.  (In 1996 only 260,000 people visited, by 2007 that figure had swollen to 3,060,000.)  I recently really enjoyed the drama documentary about the story of how the zoo started to be redesigned Asahiyama Zoo: Penguins in the Sky'  http://www.nipponcinema.com/trailers/asahiyama-dobutsuen-monogatari-trailer.  It was amazing just how close the animals were in the redesigned areas, you are sometimes only 50cm from a very fierce furry animal through a well-designed double fence.

As you can see from some of my photos, the seals have perspex tubes to swim up and down in if they want (they don't have to), the penguins are clearly visible swimming through the water alongside you as though flying in the sky, the large cats have a very high volume to move around in as they can climb right up trees and structures within their enclosure, the lesser red panda can cross over your head on a panda foot bridge!

Useful starting webpages for traveling in this area:
http://www.furano-kankou.com/english/home.htm
http://www.cbnet.co.jp/furanobus/lavender.html　(timetable for Lavender Bus)
http://www.asazoo.com/index.php?bus　(timetable for Asahiyama Zoo bus)

Trains and buses are infrequent, so you will need to use a combination of bus and train, and plan well to make sure you do as much as possible between transport stops.  Except for when going to Lavender Batake station I recommend using normal JR as the Norocco tourist train is twice as expensive.

Photos at the right link!