Obihiro, Hokkaido, Jun.5 – 6, 2025
Garden tour, moor hot springs and Butadon grilled pork ball
Since I watched an episode about Ban’ei horse racing on NHK’s document 72 hours, Obihiro has become one of the items on my bucket list. I’ve been to Sapporo, Hakodate, Asahikawa, Memanbetsu and Kushiro, out of the cities in Hokkaido, but Obihiro. I booked the flights departing on Thursday and returning on Saturday without checking the race schedule. I later found the race is held on Weekends and Mondays. But my partner and I decided to go without change. We thought we may have other things to do: staying at Japanese Onsen Ryokan, going to visit some of gardens and eating local delicacies.
We flew in Obihiro airport before 10 o’clock on June 5. The weather forecast of Obihiro area was cloudy during our stay. However, the weather turned out to be fine when we arrived. We checked out the car at Toyota and headed to Tokachi Hills, one of the gardens in the list of Hokkaido garden path. There are eight flower gardens between Asahikawa, middle of Hokkaido, and Obihiro in the south. The main route between them is known as Hokkaido garden path. Last year, we visited Ueno Farm, one of the gardens in Asahikawa. We even wanted to go to these two garden from Asahikawa. But we did not so as we realized it was far away for a same day trip. We have plenty of time this time. We planned to visit two gardens: Tokachi Hills, first day and Tokachi Millennium Forest on the second day.
Driving North some 30 minutes from the airport, there is Tokachi Hills. It is like a garden in a forest park. Cool air and gentle winds blowing in the garden relaxed me. The cicadas are chirping though it is early in June. Later I learned they are called “Ezo Natsuzemi” or Hokkaido Summer Cicadas. A group of preschoolers are playing on the large lawn. Maybe, they are on the kindergarten’s field trip. We walked for about an hour looking flowers and entered a cafe for coffee. It was around noon. There are a few people and a large floor with green. We sit at the table near the windows. We can see the kids are playing on the ground. I ordered a Vienna coffee. She ordered a herbal tea and pieces of French toast which we shared. Watching the beautiful garden through the window from the quiet airconditioned large room of high ceiling was therapeutic to me. The first night we stayed at Fukui Hotel near Obihiro station. The hotel has a Moor wellspring for their bath. Moor wellsprings are brown colored plant-based water, which is rare type of wellspring in the world. The moor water is known as effective to healing fatigue. They have a large bath on the ground floor. We had some food and drink bought from Seico Mart in the room and relaxed the night.
On the following day, we had breakfast at the hotel at 8:30. We usually have breakfast by five o’clock before going to work. Now we have no time schedule for today. We woke up and went to the large bathroom on the ground floor. Then we decided to walk towards Obihiro station. The air is nice and cool . It is not moist like Yokohama. We walked to the other side of the station aimlessly for about half an hour. We returned to the hotel and stopped by Seico Mart near the hotel to buy a hot coffee to go. We bought some food and a bottle of wine at the same store last evening. We had breakfast at a restaurant on the second floor of the hotel at 08:30. We chose a Japanese breakfast set. It is nice to have breakfast late in the morning. We packed our luggage and checked out around 9 o’clock. Today we are going to visit Tokachi Millennium Forest in Shimizu town. We got into a rural area. It took about 40 minutes. We were driving through large fields where herds of young cows are grazing. Infront of us a large mountains were standing at the distance. It took about 40 minutes. When we entered the garden, we noticed something are chirping. I later learned they are cicadas which are called Edo Haru Zemi, or Hokkaido Spring Cicadas. They are not as loud as Cicadas in Mainland.
The first day we arrived in Obihiro, We went to Michinoeki Otofuke, Roadside station, in Otofuke town for lunch. There are shops of local produce, souvenir shops, restaurants and bakery. We decided to have a set menu of Butadon grilled port bowl with vegetable miso soup. Butadon is a popular delicacy of Obihiro. You cannot leave Obihiro without eating it. Pork is grilled with soysouce based sweet sauce. It reminds me of the sauce used for Unagi eel. The sweet sauce goes well along the grilled soft pork. You can choose a bowl with three slices of pork or four. I choose three. I found it was right decision. Grilled port on the rice with a vegetable miso soup was good enough for lunch. I read there are variety of Butadon in Obihiro. I hope I could come back to the city and try again.
