A travel day today with an 8.30 am departure from our hotel in Sōunkyō on our way to Kushiro, the last port of call on the Hokkaidō Horizons art tour for 2018.

We drove through some awe inspiring scenery and even saw a bear and some deer as well as snow-covered mountains and lots of clear rivers and streams.

Flowers too, when we stopped for a break.  These are miniature chrysanthemums (according to our on-board botanist, Graham):

Lunch was at the Ainu village at Lake Akan for a chance to see something (albeit very touristy) of the indigenous culture of Hokkaidō (or “Ezo” in the native tongue).

Before reaching Kushiro, we stopped at the Crane Reserve near the airport for an hour to see the red-capped cranes that are a national symbol of Japan (and the emblem that adorns the tail of all JAL aircraft).  They are only found in this part of Hokkaidō and come from Siberia, China and North Korea, which makes their relevance to Japanese culture as mysterious as everything else in this remarkable country.

OK.  Who can spot the baby crane in this second photo?  You are allowed to enlarge it with your fingers on the screen (for you iPad readers) and the little brown thing to the right of Mummy crane is the … mmm, what is the correct word for a baby 鶴?

Last painting day tomorrow in the Kushiro wetlands.

Each morning, Kath distributes her Goddesses cards and this morning Ev selected hers: the Sorceress:  “whatever you command today will come to pass.”  And so it transpired.

A drizzly morning with rain threatening turned into a cloudy morning with no rain and sunshine (well a glimpse thereof) in the afternoon.  But importantly, enough decent weather for two sessions of painting on our last day in Sōunkyō.

This was the first spot — under an overpass on the road between our hotel and Kamikawa, spotted by Ev and our brilliant driver, Itō-san.  The views of the mountains and the raging Shirakawa river (fed by the melting snow) mprovided a morning’s painting opportunity, in spite of the cold wind.

In the afternoon, we returned to the waterfalls from yesterday.  Interestingly, in spite of the overnight rain, there was less water cascading over the the Ginga-no-taki than yesterday.  But the artists did some spectacular work as they shivered in the cold (but no rain) beside the river.

Back to the Sōunkyō village where we thought we’d all enjoy the cable car ride to the top of the nearby mountain only to discover that it was closed due to “high winds”.  I put that in parentheses because the true story we discovered thanks to Marg’s chat with the Tourist Information Centre lady, was that there had been a bear sighting in the mountain.  Not just any bear.  But a higuma, the most ferocious meat-eating critter in these parts!

So we adjourned to the hotel for another show and tell with Ev before dinner and an onsen and an attempt to watch the Royal Wedding (well some of the group were interested) and/or log on to the internet to post a blog (that would have been me) — only to be thwarted again by 1000 Chinese tourists all logging on at the same time and churning up all the megabytes.

Hence this post is being distributed on Sunday night from the ANA Crowne Plaza Hotel in Kushiro, where the connection is so fast you’d think you were in the 21st century.