#noboribetsu

1. Hokkaido Kaitaku village is a big outdoor museum that archives old historical buildings, many of which appear in GK. So many, in fact, that the museum handed me a map where they list the buildings that appear in the manga and it was most of them.

The church in which Tsurumi confronts Asirpa

The photography studio

Herring fishermen's communal lodge

The infamous otter hotpot location👀

I even saw two cosplayers dressed up as Inkarmat and Suenaga doing a photoshoot together in an old clinic!

I couldn't not buy a box of GK Tsukisappu Anpan too.

2. The old Sapporo Beer factory

A lot went down here...

3. I went to an Ainu cuisine restaurant. I had a bear meat hotpot, deer meat skewers, tonoto (Ainu wine made from millet), ento herb tea, among other things. They were all amazing.

They had copies of GK volumes as well. I miss you Kiroranke.

4. I soaked up in an onsen at Noboribetsu.

The beautiful sulfuric Hell Valley at Noboribetsu.

Here I went to the Noboribetsu Bear Park and saw many Ezo Higuma bears. The males are so big, and while they are cute they would be utterly terrifying to encounter in the wild.

The park also had exhibits showing Ainu living spaces, tools, clothing, and explanations about the Iomante bear ritual which were really interesting.

From Wednesday to Tuesday:

水 The abandoned Temiya line in Otaru now serves as a park, with the old yard housing the Otaru City Museum

木 Sapporo's Olympic Big Hill, 102m inrun on top of a 145m slope

金 Back to Hell! In terms of size, Noboribetsu Jigokudani blows its Beppu counterpart out of the water

土 Statue and old warehouse on the Otaru canal

日 My best shot of the famous Hakodate night view - it was so busy, I only saw the narrow city sight from the bus going down!

月 The train deck of the former Seikan ferry Hakkôda Maru at Aomori, followed by ramen and a private gongyo prayer with Noriki and Keisuke

火 Kabushima-jinja at Hachinohe, a shrine placed on a seagull breeding ground - that white sludge isn't snow!

GK TRIP - NOBORIBETSU ♨️ + SHIRAOI 🥬

4th day! took a 2½ hour bus to noboribetsu and saw jigokudani (hell's valley)! noboribetsu onsen (yes that's the town name) really was just a tourist resort that smelled like eggs thanks to the sulfur. i HIGHLY recommend trying out the hot springs here!!!

on the 5th day, traveling to shiraoi from noboribetsu is easy- a walk away from shiraoi station itself. the new upopoy ainu museum finished in 2020 was AMAZING. considering i helped write a paper about ainu back in college, there was a lot of eye-opening facts, artifacts, etc!! i tried some ohau and it was very good.......

with the old museum taken down, unfortunately i couldn't find noda-sensei's drawing of asirpa anywhere! i asked and i think they took it down already- probably because they wanted to focus solely on what was important about ainu culture this time around.

6TH DAY, NOBORIBETSU PART TWO! BEAR PARK!!!! it was a fun place where you can actually kinda interact with hokkaido bears and learn abt them! there was also a small part abt their association with ainu culture.

Rainy Season in Noboribetsu, Hokkaido as Autumn approaches, by Cheeserland.

Liu hello!!! It's been a while!!!

Thanks for stalking ahahahah. Yeah I'm trying to come back here bit by bit 😂

I've been good! Life's been a bit of a roller-coaster ride...

So all my friends have graduated from college except me lol, and my mum has been tearing my ears off with 'when are you graduating?' kind of questions xD

What about you? How have you been? what've you been up to?

Also here are some photos from my Japan internship that I definitely owe you. Sorry it took me this long lol