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 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. There are other reasons to go: staying at Japanese Onsen Ryokan, going to visit some of gardens and eating local delicacies.
We flew in Obihiro airport before 10 o’clock. The weather forecast was cloudy during our stay. But 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 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 as it is far away. Now we got early in the morning. We have plenty of time. We planned to visit two gardens: Tokachi Hills, first day and Tokachi Millennium Forest on the second day.