Abashiri’s main claim to fame is its prison - so I cycled straight there, only to find that the famous “Abashiri Prison” that everyone talks about is really the Meiji-era section that’s been preserved in a museum. Oh, well. This is the actual, functioning prison, with its Meiji-era gate and walls. (The child that you might be able to make out in front of the gate is a visitor, not a resident.) I spent the night at a very nice youth hostel that offered a lot of activities and some other very interesting services: looking at the drink menu, I spotted a category called “drift ice” (ryuho). I thought it might be the name of a local sake, but no: in winter, they actually hike down to the beach and hack off a piece of the drift ice in the frozen ocean and use it as ice for various drinks. What a great idea... and no, I probably won’t be back in winter to sample it.

The next day was the ride to Shiretoko. It started with typical coastal and harbor scenery as I left Abashiri, but the setting soon changed to something more Hokkaidoesque: these horses were grazing off the side of the road right before Hamako-shimizu, one of the major local tourist spots where wildflowers (yup, here as well) bloom on a narrow strip of land between the Sea of Okhotsk and a lake. A small railway runs along the coast and is apparently quite famous: several cameramen were there with tripods, taking pictures of the pretty wildflowers. Too late I realized they were mostly there to snap a photo of the famous tiny train as it made one of its few trips of the day.