From Toya, I got the train to the nearby town of Noboribetsu Onsen which another area is famed for its volcanic activity.
One of the main attractions is an ancient volcano that spilt open thousands of years ago to form Jidokudani or ‘Hell Valley’.
While I am sure that Dante would have loved the place, to me it feels a bit more like what imagine it might be like on Mars.
The area is a wide, shallow crater that is yellow and green with sulfur and other elements that bubble to the surface. There a stream, pools and geysers and areas where the steam rises out of the ground in massive clouds. In areas there is bubbling noise, or hissing or a rattling popping noise, a lot like when a sauce pan is on a heavy rolling boil and the lid rattles. In places it smells like sulfur or rotting eggs. It is totally bizarre scene but very awesome.
I found many of the warning signs very funny - you see some cloudy, yellow water come boiling out of the ground with lots of steam and hissing and stinking like egg-fart, the sign says "No drinking" like that’s the first thing you would think of doing with it!
You can walk through the valley on a wooden boardwalk, looking at the strange landscape which in winters was a surreal mixture of both snow-covered and steaming, and then climb out the over side and walk through the forest a short way to the next valley which has a smaller crater lake, that is also just below boiling point. This is very still, but steaming and the water is very blue. There are many photos and also some videos of various bits of ground doing things they should not and it was a lot of fun tromping through the snow and trees between bits of land that looked like they were sets from a Sci-Fi film.
The town itself is also is fully on-board with the Hell theme; and a large number of demon statues are dotted around the place to ‘welcome’ you to town in a rather imposing and terrifying way. Some of these are also shrines dedicated to getting demonic assistance with various subjects such as passing exams or love. In the evenings, there are many yukata wearing visitors from the various onsen hotels roaming the streets to visit them all in turn. Ruling over all of this is Enma – the King of Hell – who has a mechanical shrine that transforms his calm visage for court into the furious face of a demon a few times a day.
Once a year leaves his shrine to parade through the streets to in one of the towns many demon- and hell-themed events that fill the calendar throughout the summer – if planning a visit make sure you check them out!
