Hokkaido Part 2

Tents have come a long way since I was a kid. instead of the poles running through sleeves, they get clipped on so that even a two year can do it. 

Here is a shot of the island in the middle of Lake Toya. This is Ryan's favorite picture. I took it, but I just don't appreciate wildfowl of any kind. I just assume that they are related to Canada geese and make the same amount of mess.

The girls embraced climbing up fallen trees on this trip. There are a lot of similarities between goats and kids. Behind the girls you can see little infant bamboo. We never saw any large bamboo growth.  I think that it all freezes in the winter and then has to grow as fast as it can up here in the north.

There are no picnic tables at campsites in Japan, so we had to make do with what we had. Note the child in the background that has learned to crawl and put small leaves/rocks/sticks in her mouth. Is there anything better than a tent for containing a child?

We hiked to this lovely waterfall.  Sadly the light wasn't so great for a picture, but note that everyone is looking at the camera.

 Here we are standing in front of a real live smoldering volcano. It had smoke billowing out of it and everything. Thrilling.

 The girls practiced their jumping along the boardwalk.

One of our goals while in Hokkaido was to try the local dish - Genghis Khan. After conferring at our campsite with the host through pantomime and short phrases we were directed to this restaurant. Actually he wrote the name of it down on a piece of paper. As a side note, the Japanese characters he wrote didn't match any of the phrases you see on any of the signs in the picture. We had to show our little piece of paper to people at neighboring locations until we finally "found" it.

Here is Ryan bravely cooking our tasty treat. Perhaps for our next trip we will learn the Japanese characters for "small portion".