After buying some beer from the local Aeon mall and getting mailed back to our house, we went to get the last couple of stamps from the shrines in Asahikawa. Hokkaido Gokoku Shrine and Asahikawa Shrine. Both nice in their own ways, the first was quite impressive, with a nice garden and pond, the second, smaller, with hundreds of bells in the precincts.
After the shrines, we went a little outside of Asahikawa to the south, to a place聽 called Biei, to see some famous places that were features in adverts, dramas and on packets of cigarettes in the 70s and 80s. Very classy, and very nice actually.
The countryside in Hokkaido is supposed to look like the UK, but I didn't think that it did, until we came to this area. The country changes from looking like France, to Belgium, to Scotland, to England in the space of a couple of minutes drive along the road. Here are some pictures which may highlight that point.
There was a lot more beautiful solitary trees, scenery and other things to see in that area, but we had a plane to catch and were close to the time where we had to return our rental car to the airport, so we had to make a rather quick sprint back to Chitose, but there were so few cars around, that we had a clear road back and got the flight just.
I thought that we could see a lot more of Hokkaido, but I didn't realise how huge it was and how many things there were to see there. It definitely warrants a return trip under safer circumstances, maybe next year.
