Furano is known for three main things: lavender fields, the television drama きたのくにから (Kita No Kuni Kara = From the North Country; I think that's what it translates to), and Furano Ski Resort. Well, the lavender fields are buried in snow and I don't know a thing about that television drama...so I guess all I have to talk about it is the skiing! Of course!
Furano is 142km east of Sapporo. It's smack-dab in the middle of Hokkaido- which is why it's sometimes called the へそ ("heso" = belly button) of Hokkaido. They even hold a へそまつり ("heso matsuri" = belly button festival), which is during the summer and will not be talked about here- though you should do a google image search of the festival because it's pretty funny. (ohkay, i made you guys a link...just click google image search.) This city (8th largest in Hokkaido!) is surrounded by the biggest mountains in Hokkaido- Mt. Tokachi-dake of the Taisetsu Mountain Range, also known as the "roof of Hokkaido," and Mt. Ashibetsu-dake of the Yubari Mountain Chain.
Furano ski resort has two zones: Furano Zone and Kitanomine Zone. In the Furano Zone, they have a super high speed ropeway; it takes 101 passengers something like 2,330 meters in less than 5 minutes. I think we only rode it once the entire time we were there though. Haha. Just like Niseko, Furano is blessed with snow from the Sea of Japan and Siberia except that its powder is even drier than Niseko's. What?! So it basically sounds like THE place to ski, doesn't it?!
Well, it is!! Furano is hands-down my favorite place right now. I'm having a lot of trouble keeping this entry organized because I just want to rave about Furano...Let me just give you a short recap:
Ryan and I ended up getting ourselves a 4 day weekend last week (Ryan actually got 5 days off!!) so I booked us a bus to Furano and pension accommodations by the gondola in Kitanomine Zone. It took about 3 hours to get to Furano and it was a half km walk from the gondola to our pension, Pension Ressha House. The pension was nice but we didn't get a room with ensuite bathroom so it really was more like the Japanese ryokan we stayed in in Hamamasu. The bathrooms were dorm-style and the shower/bath was gender separated Japanese style. I never actually had to share the shower/bath with anyone so it was like having a huge shower room all to myself and my own pool to soak in afterwards. I have to say that although it was a really nice place, I never felt rested there. Maybe because I was too tired or starting to get sick (I've got a pretty bad cold right now) or it was too hot...or maybe it was the weird elevator music that was constantly playing. That REALLY bugged me. They did turn it off at a certain time at night but still. Anyway, like I said before, the pension was 0.5 km from the gondola and unlike Niseko, Furano doesn't have its own free shuttle bus service for the resort area. It wasn't a terrible hike though.
What the walk looks like from our pension to gondola
So the first day we decided to take the bus into downtown Furano for some おみやげ ("omiyage" = souvenir) shopping and dinner. I happened to see that there was Geo in town (Geo is a multimedia store that sells lots of used video game stuff) so of course, we had to stop in there so Ryan could get his video game fix. The best places to find rare items are in small towns in the middle of nowhere and Ryan really lucked out because Geo was having an insane sale.
After buying the souvenirs and some games, we had dinner at Teppenyaki Masaya where we ordered the Furano Omu Curry and their super fluffy おこのみやき(okonomiyaki), which I can't remember the name of anymore. You can translate okonomiyaki to "whatever you want cooked" and that's basically what it is- a pancake type dish with whatever ingredients you want. In most okonomiyaki restaurants you actually cook the pancakes yourself and have a choice of toppings and sauces. In other places the chef makes the okonomiyaki on a grill in front of you. The specific okonomiyaki we had at Masaya was different in that it was extremely fluffy. It was actually the first okonomiyaki I've had so I have nothing to compare it to. It looks very light and fluffy but since it is made with potato it is also pretty filling.
Masaya of Teppenyaki Masaya making our food!
Our OkonomiyakiThe Furano Omu Curry is Furano's signature dish. First of all, Omu Curry is just rice wrapped in an omelette with curry on top and can be found pretty much anywhere. To be a Furano Omu Curry you must follow these rules:
1. Use Furano-raised rice, vegetables, and eggs.
2. Must be served with a glass bottle of Furano Milk.
3. Must be under 1000yen.
If it follows these rules, only then can you plant a little "welcome to Furano" flag in the rice before serving. It is very tasty and the milk was really good too!
Furano Omu CurrySo we had a good restful first day. The next day we had breakfast at our pension and then made the hike up to the gondola (which, not gonna lie, was not the best part of my day). I soon found that even though I had to climb uphill in my boots with my skis and poles, it was totally worth it. Furano powder is awesome and plentiful! I was scared at first because there was a sign that read "Attention Beginners!! There are NO beginner courses at the top of Kitanomine gondola!!! Take the lift instead!" But boy, do I feel sorry for those beginners who stay away from the top...the view is amazing!! (Also, it would have been another uphill climb to the lifts from the gondola station.) And as I would soon find out, there is almost no course in Furano that I CAN'T ski. I have to say it's a combination of the amazing snow and the fact that the courses really aren't that hard as compared to Niseko. I think that first day we skiied pretty much everything except for the three expert courses and the mogul run.
That night we ate at Panier. We had chosen the restaurant because it advertised homemade pizza but when we arrived we decided that we weren't in the mood for pizza and it didn't really look like a pizzeria anyway. The restaurant was really cute- pretty big but also just felt like we were sitting in someone's home. I suspect many of the places around the ski resort are like that especially in the Kitanomine zone, which is known to be an area full of pensions and small hotels. That's part of the charm of Furano- it doesn't feel touristy; it's just a small town with a really big mountain. We ordered mushroom black curry and pumpkin gratin. The black curry was apparently their specialty so we had to order it. It was a pretty mild curry, very dark and thick. I was surprised by the serving size- it was almost as much rice as our rice cookers puts out- and we have a 3 cup rice cooker. Luckily, I have Ryan. The pumpkin gratin was really good too. We ended the meal with chocolate banana cake a la mode! Yum! The vanilla ice cream had a delicious blueberry sauce on it. It was Ryan's favorite part.
Mushroom Black Curry
Pumpkin GratinThird day we were there was a bluebird day. I forgot until now to mention the weather. Furano was really cold but not as cold as we were expecting. Maybe around -8 celsius? Not sure, maybe it was colder. Anyway, it wasn't as windy as Niseko but it did snow a lot while we were there. So the third day, we skiied everything except maybe one of the expert courses in Furano Zone...but it's hard to tell sometimes which course you're on or where exactly you are. So who knows. I was so happy to be able to experience Furano during some snowfall and some sunlight. I have to say in either situation, the view is breathtaking. I especially loved the views from Furano Zone's highest lift- aptly named "Downhill Romance."
Don't actually think this is from Downhill Romance...
But it's a pretty good representation of what pretty much all of Furano looks like.
The mountain was full of students that day- I think a high school school was having a field trip. It was pretty funny to see all the students dressed all in the same ski outfits- from their matching hats and goggles to their ski/snowboard boots. We're not sure if they were dressed like that so it would be easy to spot them or keep them in a group or if it was just for solidarity. Probably a little bit of both. It's a pretty interesting sight to see from the lifts- the whiteness of the slopes dotted with groups of people all dressed alike. There were also men dressed in green camouflage or solid olive green snow suits using really old-school looking cross country skis. We decided that they were members of the self-defense force's mountain unit. Wish we had pictures of all these...
In Kitanomine Zone there is an expert course called Furikowaza which slopes downward off the edge of an easier course and is ungroomed. When we approached it that day we found a group of high school boys laughing like crazy and having a ball basically falling their way down the course. So, of course, we joined them! I got a lot of encouragement from imagining that their ski instructor at the bottom was yelling "がんばって" ("Ganbatte" = Try your best!) to me as well as to the boys. I wish I could have skiied with them all day! Haha.
At the end of the third night, we decided to go back to Panier because we just liked it there so much. A different man served us at first and brought us a Japanese menu but the previous waiter saw us and was so excited to see us. Both of them were very impressed with our Japanese. This time we ordered the potato gratin and a mushroom doria. とてもおいしい!! ("totemo oishii!" = very delicious!) And of course we ended dinner with cheesecake a la mode, just so that we could have more of that delicious blueberry sauce.
That night we also went to Ningle Terrace, a string of 15 cottages where artisans create and sell their products. It's advertised as a "fairy tale arts and crafts village" "lit up with thousands of fairy lights" and has "well dressed snowmen and huge snow mushrooms on every log cabin." It's behind the New Furano Prince Hotel, which is huge and has its own onsen and is probably really expensive to stay in. Anyway, it was a really cute "forest boardwalk" but we were freezing and didn't want to miss the bus back to Kitanomine. I did get to buy an awesome kaleidoscope made out of a tree branch and we tasted the やき ミルク ("yaki miruku"= a baked milk drink) at Chu Chu Cafe. We were really surprised when I ordered it because the cashier just brought it out from under the counter. I really liked it though. It had a really tasty kind of caramelized skin on top. I think it would have tasted better hot though.
Yaki Milk!! So Good!
Ryan and the ferociously cute snowbear!
Should have borrowed their scarves...SO COLD!On our fourth and last day, our bus wasn't leaving for Sapporo until 5PM so we decided to check out of our room in the morning, store our bag at the pension and ski for a few hours. It was another beautiful day. On this last day, I pretty much got all the falling I didn't do the other two days out of the way. I figured it was a good day to fall a lot since I probably wasn't skiing the next day. My best fall was when I decided to ski into the ungroomed powder on one side of a course and face planted into it instead. Hahaha. I guess I underestimated how fast I was going and how deep the powder was. My skis basically just sunk in and I tripped over them. It was the first time my skis popped off though and I had quite a time trying to get my skis back on on a slope. It was a lot of fun though!
So...that's basically everything that happened in Furano. I just want to get this posted so ASAP since I've been working on it like all week and I'm getting sick of it...more later...
I'm going to ski off the horizon!!!Please click the link below for the full album!
(Unfortunately we're not the busiest shutterbugs...but it's better than nothing!)
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| Furano |
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