day 236 - Toya to Sapporo

Nakajima. On our last morning at Toya we took a cruise out to these islands which are four peaks of a submerged mountain. We managed to sight wild deer, squirrels and an unidentified woodpecker...

Ezo (Hokkaido) Deer were released on Nakajima. Free from predators, they soon began breeding and eating out the island. Unfortunately they've had to be selectively culled to redress the balance.

Queen Erizabeth Rose.

Botanic Gardens of Hokkaido University, Sapporo.

Her Glacious Majesty would be so ploud.

Japanese Red Dragon Fly. 

(Botanic Gardens, Sapporo.)

Ezo Wolf. Hokkaido University Museum, Botanic Gardens, Sapporo.

He's pissed off because he's stuffed, confined to a glass case - and he's extinct. When it became a threat to Western-style farming, the Hokkaido wolf was methodically and ruthlessly exterminated. By 1880 it ceased to exist on the planet.

day 235 - visiting volcanoes

This seagull approved of our room at the Toya Kanko Hotel as much as we did. (Nakajima and Lake Toya behind.)

Nishiyama. We set out to find the uninspiringly named West Mountain. After losing our way we eventually found the walking trail to the hill which has only existed for 8 years. The photo shows one of a number of structures which didn't survive the birth of a new mountain.

Showa Shinzan. This huge hunk of rock grew from a flat field to 400m in 1 year 7 months in 1944-45. It still smoulders, too hot to support plants or snow.

Why we hate bear parks. We were promised a place where we could observe families of bears in their natural habitat, where "the humans are caged and the bears are free." It turned out to be a very depressing concrete bear-pit where the inmates beg for "cookies".

We generally like to taste all the local produce, but we passed on the packaged Hokkaidan deer, seal and bear.