It’s been awhile since I blogged about our summer vacation of 2016 in Hokkaido which we started with our overview of our itinerary. The last post was about our stay at Asahidake located here (which left off with our stay at Ryokan Yukomansou).
Leaving Asahidake, the weather was terrible, as it was raining hard while we drove down the mountain onto our way back to Asahikawa. I had plans to visit Asahikawa Zoo, which is famous across Japan because of how it devised their enclosures to allow a focus on the optimal view of the animal’s behavior- not just showcasing the animals themselves. With the rain hitting the area hard, we almost decided to skip this attraction, but fortunately, we still decided to brave the weather and visit this amazing zoo. We were pleasantly surprised at the admissions gate as the zoo only charged adults 820 yen and kids under 14 were free, so we ended up only having to pay 1640 yen total for admissions (about $16 US for the six of us).
Here are some of the highlights of our visit:
The hippopotamus exhibit not only allowed you to see the hippo above water, but there were multiple floors of the exhibit that allowed you to see their behavior under water.
The seal exhibit allowed you to see the seals play in their aquatic environment. Here everyone tried to capture the moment they swam through the tube that connected the tank with their aquatic and above ground exhibit.
The polar bear exhibit had a personal view of what their preys, like seals, see when they come up from the ice in the arctic. We waited in a very orderly line to take this photo to see what the seals see when they break the ice. The polar bear just passed me by as it circled it’s way around the exhibit to allow this close photo of it.
The red pandas were mostly resting when we visited and once we were about to leave, one of them finally decided to get up and walk through their tree trekking path above us, which allowed us to capture this timely photo.
When we were visiting the lion exhibit, we were fortunate that the lion and lioness were resting right in front of our glass enclosure. This allowed us to take this photo of them resting right in front of us.
The tiger was prowling around its cage when we visited, and we patiently waited in the glass portion for it to pass as we took pictures. It was a lot bigger than we realized when it finally walked in front of us.
The penguin exhibit, like most of the key attractions, allowed multiple views of their environment both above and below. Here we can see them swimming under the water in their labyrinth-like environment.
The penguin display above ground allowed such a close view of the emperor penguin that if you stretched your hand, you could touch them.
There were many more animal exhibits that we experienced, but didn’t capture the right moments or pictures of the animals. Overall, we all really enjoyed walking through the entire zoo and were very happy that we decided not to skip this attraction due to the weather.
After the zoo, we decided to go back to Ramen Village and try out another ramen shop for lunch.
This time we tried Ishida. From the brochure, the restaurant highlighted that their broth was made from pork bones- and from what I assumed- the leg of the pork due to the marrow to give a rich-flavored broth. Seeing that the restaurant was packed this late in the afternoon, we followed the convention that if packed, it must be great.
Once we entered the restaurant, we saw the open kitchen with the lines of bowls with broth being prepared. As we waited, we heard lots of Mandarin being spoken and later saw a tour guide come in to guide additional folks in. We came to realize that a Taiwanese tour company directed their group to this restaurant and that was why it was packed. We didn’t realize this until we were seated.
Once seated, most of us ordered the shoyu ramen, as Asahikawa ramen is known for this style of ramen. Additionally, we wanted to compare it to Aoba ramen we had two days ago. The verdict was that, although good, it didn’t have the complexity and depth that we experienced in Aoba. The noodles were softer than we expected. Overall it was good, but we preferred Aoba much more. Guess you shouldn’t just follow the theme of visiting a packed restaurant to get the best.
My daughter ordered the kimchi ramen, which was again good, but just tasted like kimchi added to their shoyu broth, it was kinda flat noted. Overall, Ishida was good but not memorable.
After Ishida Ramen, we headed to our next destination of Furano and Biei and had to check into our next hotel stay which was Chalet Fuyuri; it will be highlighted in the next post. Here’s a preview of the building in the picture below.
