THE BEST PLACES TO SEE IN CENTRAL HOKKAIDO, JAPAN (FURANO, FARM TOMITA, UNKAI, SHIBAZAKURA, BIEI) 4K

Welcome back to our four-day Hokkaido trip. Today we will be exploring central Hokkaido and we will take you all the way to Mombetsu by the end. We will start our day at Unkai Terrace, then be visiting the beautiful flower farm Tomita. We will also stop by Shirogane Blue Pond before driving to Shibazakura Takinoe Park which should be in full bloom around this time in late spring. Finally we will stay the night at Mombetsu. After an hour and a half we're finally in the gondola. Man that was a cold wait. Wasn't that a cold wait Dylan? That was terrible. Get here, buy tickets in advance if you want to come here please. Because it took us over an hour to stand in the line by the time we were able to board the lift and go up the mountain the sun was already up and we missed the sunrise so we were hoping we can still see at least part of the sea of clouds still. All right guys so we went up the Unkai gondola and we've made it to the sea of clouds after a long wait because Dylan's cold over here, I'm cold over here. We woke up at 4am, left the hotel at 4 30. I got here at around like 4 45. The gondola opened, we thought it opened at 4 30, it opened a little later towards like 4 50, 5 o'clock in the morning and then it took about an hour until we got into yeah until we got up here. So if you are coming here please buy tickets in advance. Yeah we weren't sure how to do that but if you can figure out a way definitely do it because the wait was just atrocious and it was terrible. But it's nice because the two clouds actually came together and we had the sea of clouds that we wanted to see but the sun is a little high so we're not going to get the sunrise but that's okay because we still made it here and that's what counts. Right Dylan? Yes I agree. The term Unkai means sea of clouds in Japanese and it refers to a natural phenomenon where clouds form generally in valleys or overseas in very stable air conditions like temperature inversions. This way humidity can reach saturation and condensation which leads to a very uniform shadow cumulus cloud or fog being formed. Above this layer the air must be dry. This creates very different lengths in the clouds that make it appear like waves in a sea. A quick fun fact is that in order to see a sea of clouds you don't even have to come to Japan or Unkai Terrace. You can actually see many different sea of clouds from mountains airplanes or other elevated places when you look down upon the formations of the clouds below you. Although we didn't get the real sea of clouds experience it was still an amazing view and feeling to walk above the clouds and look down into the valley once the clouds cleared. Here are a couple pictures of what a real sea of clouds experience looks like. After spending about two hours at Unkai Terrace we went back to our hotel for a quick breakfast and continued to our next destination which is Furano. Ningal Terrace is a very small and cozy village filled with cottages in the town of Furano. The houses are actually shops which sell arts and crafts gifts and souvenirs for tourists. It is extremely beautiful at night and in the winter which is why it's also located right next to the Prince Ski Resort and Hotel. Unfortunately we weren't able to see it during the nighttime or the winter but we still thought it was worth checking out. All right so we wanted to stop by and see the Ningal Terrace that they have over here but sadly it's closed so we weren't able to walk through the wooden walkways and the wooden like kind of cabins but we did check out the ski resort that is over here and I can only imagine how good the skiing here is during the winter. Definitely a dream to come back here and go skiing. A little disappointing there's no mountain biking trails because I know that's what that's what we would have hoped for in the summer at least to be able to go down the mountain on a mountain bike but they got the mountains for it that's for sure. Yeah so now we're gonna go on to the next destination. So we made it to Farmtomita but we're a little bit early because the flowers haven't fully bloomed yet. If we would come like two weeks later it'd be absolutely beautiful but you guys can imagine when these flowers are fully blossomed how beautiful this is all going to look. But it still looks really nice right now. They actually have lavender ice cream over here which is crazy because I never even know I didn't even know that existed but let's try it out. Wow that actually tastes pretty good. If there's one thing we learned about Hokkaido Japan it's that everybody loves their flower farms and Farmtomita is one of the many flower farms in Hokkaido which creates its reputation by planting giant fields of flowers lavender and other crops to create a beautiful landscape with amazing mountains in the background. After finishing our lavender ice cream at Farmtomita we continued our day driving to another destination in the BA area. The Blue Pond also known as the Shirogane Pond is a man-made pond created to stop damage from mud flows from Mount Tokachi. In recent years the man-made Shirogane Blue Pond had become a big tourist attraction for its year-round beautiful colors. Depending on the season it can be a clear light blue or a deep green turquoise. The pond was created as a by-product after the construction was finished on a nearby dam. The pond gets its water from Shirohige Falls where the water mixes with aluminum as it settles in the pond. It reflects sunlight in a special way that gives it its vibrant colors. So we just made it to the Shirogane Blue Pond which is a wonderful place to take pictures. It's a little out of the way but it's not too far from the farm we were just at and as you can see behind me it's mainly known for these dead trees that are growing straight out of the water which is really clear and blue and it's not polluted at all and it's a really nice place to take photos. Welcome to Shibazakura Takenui Park which is as you can see a wonderful park. We drove all the way here just for this specific hill. It's full of these flowers these purple flowers are these lavender? Nope it's like this it's almost like a moss. It's full of these beautiful purple pink and white flowers and they absolutely cover this hill as I'm sure you've seen from some of the amazing footage you've gotten already and from Brian's drone footage I'm sure you can see just how wide and big it really is and it smells absolutely wonderful up here. It's about a 500 yen entrance fee per person that's why we have our little stickers on us and there are multiple trails leading all around and you can definitely spend a lot of time here and take a lot of good pictures for whatever reason and it's on the way to Monbetsu which is where we're staying for the night. So yeah make sure to come out and check Takenui Park if you're interested in flowers and you like flowers. This looks like something straight out of the teletubbies. It does. From the beginning of May to early June the whole park is covered with a bright pink carpet of moss phlox flowers. The park began in 1956 with a mandarin orange box full of moss phlox seeds. More and more flowers were planted each year until they filled a 100,000 meter area. The beautiful carpet of flowers covers the hillsides for around a month. As well as having a beautiful view of the flowers the park is also filled with a sweet scent which gets more of your senses involved. At the height of the moss phlox season the locals hold a moss phlox festival with stalls selling snacks and souvenirs. After taking in a colorful panoramic view of the mountainside covered with beautiful pink purple and white flowers of Shibazakura Park it was time to keep on driving to our final destination of the day Monbetsu. Ready to get to the hotel and sleep I'm tired. What time did you wake up? We woke up at four in the morning guys all four clouds. Yes but was it worth it? No. Yeah it was worth it we got to see the sea of clouds and we went all the way up to we went all the way to the top and we had a great view of everything. Make sure you remember to stay in the left lane because it's a right-hand drive car and in Japan you have to drive in the left lane also the stop signs are triangles. All right guys so we finally made it to Monbetsu and this is our hotel room it's a very traditional Japanese style we have the futons already laid out there's four of us and we have the tatami mats as usual and yeah we haven't really seen any videos from Monbetsu or anyone vlogging from here so we're gonna try and give you guys a good video here because we are actually right by the ocean and the ocean's right over there so yeah we guys want to show you this part of Hokkaido. Monbetsu is very well known for its drifting ice that covers the sea of Okotsu in the winter. There's also a prototype icebreaker that you can actually visit and they even also offer tours on the actual icebreaking ships. We were trying to find some restaurants where we can have dinner but the streets looked pretty empty so we ended up going to Google Maps and found a restaurant where we had one of the best dinners in Japan. I highly recommend using Google Maps to check out some local restaurants if you don't know where you want to eat exactly because you can find some nice family-owned and local businesses that have really great food like this one. So now we're trying to figure out what everything is because they don't have an English menu so we're going to be struggling here using a little bit of translate but I mean that's probably the best food is. Alright guys we're ready to eat. Oh yeah this looks pretty good. Man that was a good dinner. That was the first time we had yakiniku and let me tell you it was absolutely incredible. We had yakitori a little bit ago in Kyoto and it was awesome and then we just had yakiniku. We had the wagyu beef, we had marinated pork, it was very good. As you guys can see a very traditional style of dinner we had and I rate it very highly and I think you should definitely check it out in Monbatsu.