・・私、緑の空・・: March 2008

FINALLY. I've finally managed to get the photos up.

Took me such a long time.

And Blogger is annoying me with its auto-save-with-every-change function.

While it may be useful to have this auto-save function, it might be better to have it once every 5 minutes so that we don't have to face a hanging blogger every time we press the spacebar?

Ok, the long-awaited photos are here!

On the first day of March.

We spent the day in Tokyo.

It was basically just a lot of shopping, which is part of the reason why I don't go ga-ga when I step into Tokyo. Perhaps it is just because I'd done all the shopping I could in my 2 years in Kobe and am thus now immune to the infectious shopping culture in Japan.

We did go around anyway, to Akihabara, Ginza and Tsukiji.

Mikimoto Building in Ginza - very pretty building

That's me at Ginza.

Ok, enough of Ginza. Haha

Now to Tsukiji.

Ben's friend, Tomomi, brought us to a famous sushi restaurant at Tsukiji. Everything (almost - can't say for those I didn't taste) was fresh and very good! We ordered so much that the bill eventually came up to about￥50,000, the equivalent of SGD670. But it was worth every yen.

Kinki - a kind of deep sea fish - very sweet!

The first platter of sushi

Kuruma ebi no shio yaki

Hotate

Uni-chan & Ikura-chan - very very good!

Ben & Tomomi

For after-dinner drinks, Tomomi brought us to an Izakaya, and it was there that she order the Takana-chahan. It was so good we kept helping ourselves to it even though we were so full from dinner. I hereby declare that Japanese make the best fried rice. Hell, they even make Kimchi-chahan better than the Koreans do!

On the second day of March.

To Hakodate. That's all I can say. Heh.

Tokyo Bay

Whining puppy waiting to go Hakodate at Haneda Airport

The view of Hakodate from the mountain was pretty spectacular!

The shape of the island itself is unique, and the food served there

really just increased the enjoyment factor.

Night view of Hakodate from Hakodate-yama

On the third day of March.

Hakodate morning market.

This was a must-go for us since we missed going to the Tsukiji morning market.

It was pretty interesting, and there were lots of seafood for us to try. They were actually handing out Ikura like candies!

But we were a bit lost as to where we can get both yaki-seafood and sushi, and ended up in a sushi restaurant that was apparently featured in The Straits Times a year ago.

But it really wasn't fantastic. Ok, the uni was fresh and sweet, and the salmon not too bad, but that's about all. The crab was too small, ikura a little fishy, and the maguro still thawing from the freezer - very disappointing.

But well, at least the dried cuttlefish made up for it. It was really the freshest dried cuttlefish I've ever tasted. Oxymoronic? I know. I myself never knew such oxymorons could exist until I'd tasted it. Now everytime I look at the pic of it, I get that sudden craving.

The indoors

It's not smelly like our wet market, maybe cos it's winter?

Taraba-gani

If i'm not wrong this is Zuwai-gani

Salmon

The outdoors - bustling and friendly

Botan ebi - pregnant prawns?

Uni-chan!

I never knew Uni looked like this inside..

Gokko - a fugu-lookalike. Actually not really.

My surume-chan... the oxymoron I was talking about. I couldn't help going back there for free sampling, even after buying a pack. Yum yum...

Next destination was Onuma Koen.

This was quite an amazing-race-worthy adventure I must say.

We had to rush from the ticket counter to the train platform with all our luggages in tow all within 3 minutes.

Then silly me mistook Platform 6 for Platform 5, and made them all squeeze up the wrong train, only to have David realise the mistake, and had all of us rush down again and up the right train at the very last minute. We then had to lug our luggages all the way through the narrow carriages to the one that allows for free seating.

After all the rush, the train arrived at our destination just minutes after we'd settled down and thought we could take a break for a while.

They must have all wanted to kill me for this. Hee hee.

So we left our big luggages at the Tourist Welcome Center for 200 yen a piece.

Then off we went to explore the lake!

JR Onuma Koen station

The gang (sorry only back views available cos one of them is adamant about not having his face plastered all over my blog for scrutiny)

The lake surrounded by snow exemplified all that were there. Every cry of the crows, every laughter we made, even the silence was kind of deafening.

But it felt really peaceful, and I think it was from there that I truly started to enjoy the trip.

Snowmobiles!

Komagatake?

It was on the connecting train to Oshamambe that Ben realized that he'd left his backpack at the train station.

Luckily for him (and all of us), the train station master was kind enough to offer to send his backpack on the next train, and all we had to do was to wait an extra hour at Oshamambe and we would all be able to get to Niseko, backpack and all. The backpack arrived intact, without a single thread missing. Kudos to the Japanese honesty!

We were so grateful to the station master we decided that we must send him something nice from Singapore as a thank-you gift. *reminder*

Snow beach

Sunset at Oshamambe

Hanging out of the window

Ben & David at Yakiniku

Kanpai!

Rice stuffed in flavored squid

On the fourth to sixth day of March.

At the ski run.

HT and I went snowboarding for 3 whole days.

First day - lots of trying-to-remember-how-to-go-about-it for me.

Had the guts to take the Ace Pair Lift II that goes all the way up, but had little to spur me towards the first slide down.

Was a memorable bumpy ride in the end though, that had us stop at each intersection, trying to figure out which were the paths that we were supposed to take according to the map.

My arms were aching so much at the end of the day from trying to break my falls. But what did I have to worry about? There were so many hotsprings around! My arms were made so much better after the soak.

Hotsprings.. the wonders they do.

Second day - lots of hard lands on the knees and butt while we got more daring with speed and more difficult slopes.

By the end of the second day, I had landed on my butt so much that I was adversed to sitting down anywhere.

The last fall got me right smack on my tailbone so hard I let out an involuntary wail and lay squirming in the snow, clutching on my poor tailbone until the pain subsided

That marked the end of the second day of snowboarding. I just couldn't bear to go on without a soak in my wondrous hotspring.

They really do have healing effects, even on poor tailbones.

Third day - the most fun day of all!

The stage where we'd finally figured out how to snowboard (correctly), got more experimental with moves and speed, but remained on the same slopes that we got familiar with. We had so much fun that we were reluctant to leave the beautifully lit slopes at night, if not for the cold.

Then, imagine soaking in the hotspring again in the cold cold weather after 3 full days of snowboarding

Hotsprings -my savior

Pics from the slopes:

Kids class

Mini marshmallow kids

Buta as a pet?

View from up above - see how mountaineous Hokkaido is?

View of Mt Yotei on Day 1

The same angle on Day 3, but with Mt Yotei fully hidden by fog. It's as if it doesn't exist - amazing isn't it?

Ski slope at sunset

Ski slopes at night are freezing, but absolutely pretty!

The ski lift landing

Some me shots.

Me doing stunts

Kidding. I was falling.

There I go.

One of the last few rounds

A few shots of our cosy ski lodge:

The living room

The kitchen

The bedroom

The drying area for ski equipments

On the seventh day of March.

We arrive at Sapporo!

Sapporo seemed really just like any other city in Japan to me. Perhaps I was just oblivious to the charm of the city that found its way to others?

The first thing we did was to visit Sapporo Beer Factory.

Sapporo Beer Factory

At 2pm, the only restaurant that was opened there was the Sapporo Biergarten. (I dunno if this was just a spelling error when they decided on the name or something, or if it's a German translation)

Genghis Khan Barbecue

I don't usually take lamb because of the strong odour, but this Genghis Khan Barbecued Lamb set was fantastic!

Other than yummy lamb, the set also included Taraba-gani (King crab), Hokkaido potatoes with butter, and lots of veggies for bbq. This, of course, would not be complete without Sapporo Beer to go along. =)

We took a tour of the Sapporo Beer Museum next.

The way they constructed the cute little figures to explain how beer is made to laymen like us amazed me. It actually made me interested in how it was done.

Look at how much efforts they put into constructing each stage.

From barley

to the grind

to the barrels

to jumping into the mug of beer for a dive!

Kidding.

Beware of drinking too much beer though.

They've already forewarned you:

Beer belly! Look at how uncool it is. *ahem* hee hee

Sapporo Beer - as if you didn't know already

We went shopping around the city in the evening, and there it was that I was coerced - by myself - into buying the Blue Label bag. Hohoho. Such fun.

Around the streets..

The Sapporo TV Tower

A view of how the Sapporo city is like.

On the eighth day of March.

A day in Otaru.

The prettiest town in Hokkaido as far as I see!

Otaru is famous for its glassware, crystals and pretty little music boxes.

Every shop you go into is beautifully decorated and surrounded with tinkling Orgel music - you'd really feel prettier and delicate just by being there. =)

JR Otaru Station

We had breakfast at this small coffeeshop along the street called Shalon Coffee & Flower, which is prettily decorated with tinted glassware, cheery flowers and bright yellow seats.

We were served good Ebi Pilaf and hot coffee, along with a dose warm hospitality that made us feel right at home.

This is the kind of shops I loved to frequent when I was in Kobe.

And I also think I know why I love Otaru - it reminds me of Kobe!

Shalon Coffee & Flower

Lots of pretty flowers around

We even got talking to some of the regular customers there..!

We continued down the stretch of road, popping in and out of almost every shop peppered along the street.

A glassware and crystal shop

Pretty lamps!

Santa(na) band

In Japanese, the pronunciation for 'owl' is the same as "no hard life". That's why it's taken as a symbol of luck.

Pretty lamp shades

Glass-blowing experience for you

And you can't say you've been to Otaru if you haven't visited the Otaru Canal!

The Otaru Canal

Pretty light up at sunset

As the saying goes, what Hokkaido trip can be completed without a crab feast??

Ke-gani (hairy crab)

Taraba-gani (king crab)

Zuwai-gani (snow crab)

We tried all 3 kinds of crabs, and came to the conclusion that Taraba-gani is the best.

Ke-gani itself was a little too hairy (duh), for my liking at least, while Zuwai-gani had a kind of ammonia smell to it, and the sushi was slimy and icky.

I made myself swallow one, and poor HT had to take the other two. Not that he minded it that much I think. Heh.

We picked every piece of flesh out of the Taraba-gani shell with relish though - so juicy and sweet..!