Lake Kussharo is one of the most friendly looking lakes in Hokkaido island. We can easily access to the beach on the east side of the lake and there are even a lot of restaurants and hotels. The happiest thing is that most of the beaches have hot springs; if we dig the sand beach for a few minutes, we can easily get a natural hot bath tab. There are also some hot ponds adjacent to the lake which are perfect to take a bath in if there are no other visitors. When I visited this lake about ten years ago with my friend, we sailed on my inflatable canoe to the big island floating in the center of the lake. We heard that there are very nice natural hot springs on the beach of the island. The lake looked so familiar and easy that we sailed without having a map and compass which caused a serious problem later. The trip out to the island was very easy and comfortable, but the return trip was terrible. We lost the way back to the starting point. The view from the island was very confusing; every thing we could see was forest and we couldn't see any land mark. We just sailed to the vast forest and then we had to sail along the forest for a long time until the sun set. It was getting colder and we had no jackets. Fortunately, we could finally find out the starting point, but we almost met with a disaster. I really felt that we mustn't make light of the nature.
Comments