Lucy Morrell is a Canadian-born Australian living in Central Hokkaido. She is a former newspaper reporter and public relations worker with a strong interest in social media. Lucy lives with her husband John, who has guided skiers and cyclists in Japan since the 1980s, and their daughter Grace, who attends Furano Elementary School. Lucy works for her local tourism association helping English speakers to discover the extraordinary Furano-Biei region.
Experience ‘hadaka no tsukiai' at Fukiage onsen - where locals mix with tourists in a natural onsen under the trees. Too shy for a soak? Just walk down and dip a toe in these magical waters. Soaking in Fukiage costs nothing and will enrich your skin with minerals and your mind with memories.
Back in Australia, we have loving family, but unfortunately, none of them live nearby. In Japan, however, we have struck grandma gold with an honorary Obaachan who lives down the street.
The town of Furano has a rather unlikely local dish. It doesn’t use special ingredients found only in the wilds of Central Hokkaido. In fact, it doesn’t use many ingredients that are considered typically Japanese. It uses eggs and a sauce that will always have well-guarded secret ingredients. The local dish of Furano is called omucurry, short for omelette curry (Japanese language often uses portmanteaus especially for English words), and you can find it in dozens of restaurants.
You'd be surprised about the amount of dishes that sound like they were created in other countries, but were actually invented in Japan. There are many Japanese meals which contain mostly European ingredients and these are some of them.
Sensei Awesome, which is the nickname we have given my daughter’s teacher, invited the parents to come for a day of udon noodle making at school. Kids and their parents were given the opportunity to make hand-made udon noodles and they were fabulous!
In Japan it is usually not apparent which foods are gluten free, lactose free, vegan, vegetarian, halal, kosher, or otherwise suited to a restricted diet. I recently spoke with three visitors who each approached this challenge differently.
In Furano, bike riding is a fantastic way to explore and has a good value at 200 yen per hour. Because Furano has rich and delicious food at many attractions, bike riding is also a good way to sample local delights without adding to your waistline. In Japan, helmets are not compulsory for adults so if you prefer to wear one, bring it along.
Hokkaido offers beautiful bushwalks and treks, but hikers beware. There are two dangerous creatures lurking in those forests. One is gigantic and the other is tiny and both are best avoided.
In our family, we adhere to seven categories of waste disposal on a daily basis. This may sound impressive but actually, there are twenty-plus categories where we live. In the kitchen, we have a nama gomi bucket for compost. All cooking and food scraps go here, including coffee grinds and the flotsam I strain out of my sink.
Lavender fields in Furano rival those of Provence in the South of France. The Japanese lavender growers in Central Hokkaido are just as creative in presenting new ways to enjoy it.
People in the town of Furano, located in the very centre of Hokkaido, know that when your snow is this good, your locals are this friendly, and your food is this delicious, you are bound to be discovered by foreigners.
Whether snow is forecast, falling, or melting, there is work to be done managing it because around 10 metres will assuredly fall during winter in Central Hokkaido.
