I woke up to my alarm at 5am and hopped out of bed. We headed down to the bath right away. When I arrived there were two women heading into the bath ahead of me. I chose a locker by the wall and changed. The wash station I chose had a faulty tap, so I had to move to another. After washing, I headed into the main bath and had it to myself. There was a lady in the bubble jet seats beside the main bath. I sat for about 15 minutes and then headed up to the rooftop onsen. There was a lady in one of the individual onsen barrel baths, so I went into the big bath and had it to myself. After about 15 minutes the lady left and I had the entire bath to myself. I headed back to the room at about 5:45 and Jives was already there. I went and grabbed us some coffees from the vending machine before we headed out for the day. 

We headed out of the room, bound for Sapporo station at about 8am. We planned on taking the JR train to Noboribetsu, the death valley onsen village! At the station we saw that the next Hokuto train bound for Hakodate (stopping at Noboribetsu) was at 8:38, so we decided to go get some breakfast at Detour. We ordered a tuna cheese melt and a meat free breakfast sandwich with two large coffees. We then headed up to the track at 8:30am. The train arrived early, so we were able to line up and easily get a seat in the unreserved car 8/7. Once onboard we had an onigiri (rice ball) and I had a hot Yuzu drink (citrus). The train took about 1.5 hours and we spent the time drawing in our books. Once in Noboribetsu station we purchased tickets from the vending machine, just inside the station. The return bus trip to Noboribetsu cost 640 Yen each.

We then took some photos of oni statues outside the station, and then waited in line for the bus to arrive. The bus ride took about 15 minutes. We arrived in Noboribetsu at about 10:15. We walked through the town, taking pictures of all the oni statues along the way. There was even an oni shrine where you pour water over the stone oni’s belly.

We then walked up to a super snowy awesome shrine. The town had a geyser as well, and steam bellowed up from the manholes and over the bridge in the main square, making visibility very slim at times. The whole village smelt of sulphur, but not in a terrible overwhelming way, and  we were wearing masks which helped.

We then walked up the road to a very cool vantage point, overlooking the steamy village below. I filmed Jives rapping, but as he was rapping two deer ran by in the background. We then walked down to a little geyser in the centre of the valley via a pathway and then a narrow wooden gangway between steam vents.

The path was slippery and people were having difficulty, but we had Canadian training and also we were both wearing winter hiking boots. Afterwards we visited a few gift shops before making our way back down to the bus stop. I had hoped to go to the foot bath, but a lot of the pathways were closed because of the snow levels.

We arrived back at Noboribetsu station at around 1pm, just in time to make the 1:22pm train back to Sapporo. The train station was crazy busy so we stood at the boarding gate. They only let people on to the platform 5 minutes before the train, and as we stood there waiting, a HUGE line formed behind us!! People sure like to follow us haaaa. Also, the Japanese love lines, and I love Japan for that! There were only two unreserved cars so we were really nervous about getting seats in one of them, but by some fluke we had started a line, so there was no issue. The ride back to Sapporo station took a bit over an hour. Once we arrived at the station we tried to find a restaurant to eat at, but we failed, so instead we headed back to our hotel to regroup.