Our Hokkaido Adventure Day 13

Friday 5th July, Wakkanai

One of the street parades. We were stopped for a few
minutes while this one passed by. We're really unsure
what festival this is, but it is most probably a local one.

On Friday morning we went into town. We checked out the northern point of the city and the cold-water aquarium there, which was small but unexpectedly fun. 

We also ran into a local Shinto festival, that had people parading in the streets from various localities, most little parades carried a religious item, like an idol. They had people in costumes, drums, and some dancing too. The biggest parade we came across also had a man pulling a cart into which locals were putting offerings.

Just next to our car, this lady put her offering into the cart,
it looked like raw rice.

A beautiful flower bed outside the aquarium.

I couldn't get a good photo of this. You could put your hands

in and the small fish called, Doctor Fish, nibbled at the dry skin

on your hands. It was a weird, ticklish feeling, but the boys

loved this interactive exhibit!

These "fish" were weird. Again, hard to take photos of. Like some kind
of alien in a movie, they just kept popping up out of their holes in the sand.

The next three photos were taken by our middle son. He had a great time snapping shots on our "old" point n shoot camera that has an aquarium setting.

Some other gorgeous fish.

More Park golf

The park had four courses, we did two on Thursday and two on Friday.

David was the clear winner of the family, closely followed by our eldest son. Our youngest also proved to have aptitude for the sport, which left me and our middle son vying for last spot. Our middle son was frustrated, because he doesn’t often have trouble with new sports, but he just couldn’t get the ball to go in the right direction, often quite dramatically.

It was hot playing too, despite our expectations of a windy, cold stay in the northernmost city in Japan. And we suffered some sunburn and our youngest developed something of a rash, which seemed to be related to both the sunburn and the grass that we walked through.

Cool little three-wheeled carts that were hand propelled.
Not so easy as you might imagine!

Fun after dinner

Friday night we went over to the main reception building and the boys enjoyed the large free indoor playground for a bit before we enjoyed some ice cream from a vending machine.

It was a lovely end to our two days in Wakkanai. The next destination? Cape Soya, the northern-most point in Japan, and then on to visit some friends from CAJ who'd moved up here in April.

The playground included some high elements

Looking out into the reception area. A lovely place just to
sit while the kids played.