Lavender fields

Furano is the geographical center of Hokkaido and is well-known for its lavender fields in summer. The region draws a lot of wanna-be-artists (and real ones I guess) who are coming here for drawing the fields with some impressive mountain scenery in the background. Asahi-dake is Hokkaido's highest mountain and the whole area is a national park too.
I stayed in a lovely youth hostel in Furano which is a farm too, so sort of a farm-stay. A young family runs the hostel and for breakfast and dinner they serve home produced vegetables and fruit, homemade jam, etc. Really homely place and the couple had some of the most egalitarian work division I've come across which was nice to see. Father also taking care of the baby and caring it around on his back. I shared my room with 3 Japanese girls and got to speak a lot.
The weather was not that great, but I still decided to go for a hike on nearby Tokachidake. It was a really lovely view of the colored autumn leaves around, despite being really cloudy and a bit cold. I just thought of the bears that are living around there which made me feel a bit uncomfortable during the hike (repeating the mantra "throw yourself on the floor" to myself). When I was back at the bus stop I would have had to wait for almost 3 hours for the next bus and it was cold too, so I decided starting to walk down. Luckily an old man in his oldtimer car picked me up. We drove at about 40 km/h, but had a good chat in Japanese and he insisted on driving me right to the youth hostel's door.
I concluded the day with a visit to the pretty touristy lavender farm Tomita. The lavender is not blooming that time of the year of course, but they had some other flowers on the fields. And delicious lavender-flavoured ice-cream :-)