Hokkaido Trip Day 4: Asahiyama Zoo (旭川市旭山动物园）

The whole point of traveling to Asahikawa was to visit the zoo, which is somewhat famous in Hokkaido. Despite being very tired after all that traveling, I did not sleep well that night, I was awake at 6am and decided to wake up instead of trying to go back to sleep. I was sitting at the table updating my blog while is sun is rising outside and the view was quite awesome.

Nice sunrise view with snow outside

At 7am, I went to the onsen and again it was fabulous as I was the only one there. They actually have this section where we can lie down in the shallow water and listen to the soft music, watching the clouds goes. There was also an outdoor area which I really loved, the top part had vents for letting the natural cold air come in, while my body was immersed in water. I walk along the edge of the tub and looked outside, watching people getting busy around the JR station while the hot water was at my feet. Its really a nice place to chill as the whole area was so steamy.

After being back in the room, I was updating my blog and remembered the hotel actually gave us free breakfast vouchers for the 2 days which consisted of a drink and bread. I did not include breakfast in our room package since the reviews were not fantastic and I figured we can easily get brunch somewhere else. Nevertheless, having free complimentary breakfast is still great. I went down to AEON mall only in a thin long sleeve and T shirt since it is part of the mall, but it was still quite cold as the auto door opened at times when people were walking in. I got myself a chocolate croissant to bring back to the hotel room and finished a glass of orange juice within few minutes in the cafe.

As usual, it took P quite sometime to wake up so I had quite a bit of alone time, but we agreed that we should be out of the room by noon. Perhaps getting the extra night there is really good for him as he can get more sleep time. When we were going out, I checked with the lady at the reception area for the directions to the zoo, she gave us a bus schedule and a bus to the zoo happened to be setting off from the JR station below at that moment, so she pointed out the bus to us.

Sushi set for lunch 

We went to AEON mall 4th floor to get our brunch, and guess what we saw there. Kani-Honke! P was once again attracted to it and he did not mind going for it a second time since he really enjoyed the meal previously. A quick check on Google showed that they indeed have a third brunch at Asahikawa, other than the 2 branches which I already knew they had as Sapporo and Susukino. The setting at this Asahikawa brunch was also not as nice as it was noisier during lunch hours, apparently they attracted lots of patrons. Even though they still gave us a private room, we were sitting on normal chairs and table instead of tatami like the previous time. We did not order the set lunch this time as we did not want to spend that much time eating this time round, we have to catch a bus to the zoo in an hour or so, as the zoo will close early at 3.30pm in the winter. P ordered the exact same stuff which he enjoyed the previous time, the boiled Japanese Hairy Crab and Baked Crab, and I ordered a set of sashimi. The meal was still quite satisfying, but lack the 'wow factor' since we had already tried the same two days ago.

The bus to the zoo (with special zoo prints)

The next bus was arriving at 1.40pm, so we got to Bus Stop no. 6 outside the JR station to stand in queue waiting for it. It was more like our bus interchange where there's different areas to wait for different buses and we found it without much difficulty. Once again, it was quite cold outside so we had our full gear on, gloves and scarf and everything. That was our first bus ride in Japan (other than airport express shuttle) and it was quite interesting, people board from the back door and exit at the front door, opposite from what we do at home. When boarding, they'll collect a small ticket with the station number and there will be a board to indicate the amount of fare in front, so just pay the fare to the driver. Its interesting to note that when the passengers do not have sufficient change, there's this money changer box next to the driver and it will provide the necessary small change. So fascinating!

The board on local bus and train that will show the corresponding fare

We alighted at Asahiyama zoo after a 40min bus ride, and it was already 2.20pm, so we have almost an hour to explore around. The zoo is famous for having penguin parade during the winter, unfortunately the amount of snow fall is still insufficient when we were there, so it will only begin around late December. It should be the highlight of the zoo as many other visitors were also asking the staff about this. They even printed a small card with the explanation written in different languages as the zoo staff was only proficient in Japanese and just a bit of English like most of the other service staff in Japan. The entrance fee to the zoo was only about 800Y, so it didnt matter that we arrived quite late since it is much cheaper compared to visiting the Singapore Zoo.

The entrance

The entrance... again

As we only had about an hour, we did not manage to see all the enclosures, but we did get a quick look at the major ones. The first stop was at the penguins, which were one of the closest to the entrance. We could get really close up to the very kawaii penguins and we took many photos there, we even went into the indoor exhibit, where we can view the penguins from the other side of the tank and spotted them gazing and stoning away. It was really cute!

Love the font and cute direction signs

Temperature for the day

Cute penguins, we were so close to them

Loved how they gaze into emptiness, thinking hard about life

Different types of penguins in the enclosure

Next, we visited the polar bear. The special thing about the zoo was they built a viewing bubble glass thingy inside the polar bear enclosure so that we could take a closer look. There were two polar bears and both were prancing up and down non stop.  It looked kind of unsettling to me as one of them looked skinny and they looked stressed up unlike the polar bear we have in our homeland zoo. When I was researching about the place, I saw westerners leaving comments in Tripadvisor about the sorry state of the animals and how it is quite cruel for the zoo to keep them in small living quarters. I felt kind of sad for those polar bears but we moved on soon as we had spent quite a bit of time walking around the place looking at them at all angles.

The arctic fox

Red pandas scurrying around

Harry Potter's owl? 

Wolves that look a lot like huskies

Fierce Animals? Hmm...

It's the tigers!

We also saw other arctic and winter animals that I had not really seen before, like the white winter owl, the arctic fox, the red pandas and so on. In winter, the whole atmosphere of the zoo was indeed a little gloomy and there were not many visitors, but we still find snow and winter a novelty so we were enjoying it. We saw a few other animals like the seals, tigers, deers and bears etc and finally left the zoo when it was closing at 3.30pm. As we had missed the 3.30pm bus, we stood in queue at the bus stop for half an hour waiting for the next one to come at 4pm. It was really quite cold waiting out there since the temp was less than 0 degree, so we were really glad when the bus finally arrived. I figured that there was sufficient seats on the bus since there were just a few visitors left at closing, therefore we could have taken our own sweet time looking at stuff at the souvenir shop and so on instead of queueing up for the bus in the cold. But I'll probably not stop at Asahikawa or Asahimaya zoo the next time I'm in Hokkaido, since the zoo was small and I will probably just need another 30min or so for me to finish looking at everything there was to see. In fact, the duration of our visit was quite okay for us.

Heading into dusk

Acting cute during the bus ride back

Interior of the bus is old but its very clean

Nightfall was very early in winter and it became dark as we were traveling back on the bus. As it still felt early to us, we went to AEON mall to look for some desserts. I saw an area selling Rokkatei stuff so I bought a small packet of the strawberry white chocolate to try. It tasted familiar and good but nothing fantastic, I was glad I only bought a small packet to try so I'll probably try out other sweets and biscuits if we see Rokkatei again. Nevertheless, I'm still really impressed with the very nice packaging and the effort put into it even though I'm not really spending big bucks on the food. The service of the staff was also impressive.

Aweseome packaging

It was too early for dinner, but P felt that he wanted to get some snacks as well. We saw a Lotteria (a Japanese fast food chain from Japan) outlet along Heiwa-dori street previously so we went in to get a burger, fries and drink. We walked down Heiwa-dori street again while the shops are still opened but most of them are eateries and we did not find anything interesting. We headed back to AEON mall and we shopped awhile at the supermarket on the first, trying to find some interesting stuff to eat and try out.

Got my salt candies, the traditional snack is the middle is a yummy red bean paste thingy

We went back to the hotel to rest around 7pm and I fell asleep on the bed again, since I woke up really early in the morning. When I woke up, it was already 8pm and P was also taking a nap. As it was getting really cold outside and I knew P have the tendency to knock out dead once his head hit the pillow, I decided to get down to AEON mall supermarket again to get some 'backup dinner' in case P failed to wake up and everything is closed again when we go out to look for food. I saw a great variety of supermarket deli and cooked food before we went back to the room, but they've already started to clear the things when I went down again, so I only bought two packets of cute Hokkaido Ramen to try out someday.

Back in the hotel room, I kept trying to get P to wake up so we can go out to get proper dinner but the time just dragged on. I got a little impatience as it was really hard to accommodate to a sleepyhead and fussy eater for days during a trip. Finally, he woke up at 11pm and we set out again to look for dinner. I suggested cooking the instant ramen for dinner but as he's not a noodle person, the suggestion was turned down immediately. There was some tension when we were getting ready to go out but luckily the issue was resolved quickly and we were once out again in the really cold weather. I had to make sure my ski socks and leg warmers were on as my toes were freezing the previous time down Heiwa-dori.

Private booths available in most izakayas

Many eateries have these to hang up our coats/jackets

We looked at the same row of eateries and most of the shops except the izakaya were already closed for hours. We even went to the next street and I was surprised to find that there were many small pubs and clubs with people in their work clothes and drinking along that street. I had actually thought that Asahikawa is a small town (the image of a really same station with a small bus stop when I read up Tripadvisor) but I was wrong, it is in fact the second largest city in Hokkaido, after Sapporo. As expected, we ended up in a izakaya again, we walked for a long time around the whole area but settled for one just a street further than the other place we ate the previous night. Unfortunately, I did not really enjoy my dinner at the place as two guys were sitting at the booth across from us and one of them was chain smoking. It quite common for people in izakaya to be smoking as its a place for them to relax and drink, chit chat and have some food, plus the weather was so cold... On top of that, after we sat down and I took a good look at the menu, nothing caught my eye. I really wanted to order chazuke again, but that will be very boring. Since Asahikawa is famous for ramen, I ordered the only ramen dish they had, which is a plain chicken soup ramen which I would not have chosen if I have other choices. I also ordered a plate of sashimi to go with it as it seems that we will never go wrong with that in Japan. The ramen dish was really nothing to shout about, and P had some chicken wings which turned out not too bad and fried oyster stuff to go with his favourite Japanese rice. The fried oyster thingy turned out to be quite bitter so we did not finish that dish.

Not too fantastic but at least it filled our stomach

When we walked back to the hotel, it was already 12.45pm so we missed the chance to go to the onsen that night, even though I was dying to soak in the hot bath after such a cold day. I promised myself to wake up early the next morning for my last onsen at Asahikawa.