Hokkaido

Greetings people. I went to Hokkaido last week. Was back from the short vacation and now working like it's nobody's business. There's always a price to pay and nothing comes free or cheap. We reached New Chitose Airport early in the morning as we took 6am flight from Haneda Airport. I was all ready and excited about the whole trip!

First stop was Otaru. We came here just to see this...


Somehow, it's a place of interest for tourists and there we were, busy taking pictures with slrs. Otaru is a small harbour city with the I-do-not-think-it-is-famous canal lined by old warehouses. We had lunch at this famous seafood restaurant in Otaru which I forgot the name by now. LOL... Since it was only the first day in Hokkaido, I was thinking I'd better save my money for the next few days. So, I only ordered grilled scallop, grilled I-do-not-know-what-seafood-I-ate and raw sea urchin.


Yes, it's RAW!! Ewww.... that raw taste... I really can't stand it. Thank goodness I ate ice cream after that, just to give my taste bud a better taste to taste. There's one thing... that ONE THING... that everyone MUST TRY when they're in Hokkaido. It's the Hokkaido melons!! It's sooo juicy I think I can just eat up the whole melon! I've never tried such nice and juicy melon before! Of course, it's expensive. Fruits are all expensive in Japan anyway. The juiciness of the melons is sooo hard to resist that I stupid-ly bought one melon and brought it all the way back to Tokyo... I know =.="


It ain't cheap ok. 2300 yen for that small melon. Considering it's THAT nice, fine. I bought without a second thought. I'm planning to buy two melons in Tokyo and bring it all the way back to Miri for my parents to try... I know... even more =.="""

After Otaru, we went all the way to Wakkanai, the northern tip of Hokkaido. From Sapporo to Wakkanai, it was 5 hours journey by train. And on the second day, we went to Rebun Island. It is summer and somehow Wakkanai got lost in the season count. It was soo cold and I was only wearing light clothing.


Rebun Island is famous for its rich flora and beautiful natural scenery. It was really beautiful I thought I could just spend my old days there. However, just after 5 minutes of such thoughts, I came back to my senses and decided NOT to spend my time there. I'd rather live in places like... Switzerland.


On the third and fourth day, I was at Furano. If you're interested in Hokkaido, I think you should know what Furano is famous for. LAVENDERS!!! We followed a local tour that brought us to Furano's cheese factory, jam factory, and some other places which I personally think it's B-O-R-I-N-G.


And here comes the highlights of Hokkaido! One, the lavenders!! Because it's August, the lavenders are almost dead... T.T We only manage to see just a small part of the almost-dying lavenders. Very zha dao lor... =.="


There's a lot of farms in Furano planting lavenders but the most famous farm is Farm Tomita. That is also the place where I bought all my lavender products and the stupid melon.


I kept finding nice lavenders to take a good shot of it. And I guess this is by far the best shot I manage to take. My humble piggy-art which I dare not show to the professionals for they might drop dead laughing.


A blur background of me taking pictures of the flowers. Sooo fake... I know.


As usual, I dropped my lavender ice cream to the ground. And the lady was kind enough to offer me another lavender ice cream for free!! So nice of her and that makes me love Japanese even more. They're very extremely pigletly polite to customers. The ice cream in the picture is the first ice cream before it dropped to the ground.


More flowers. More lavenders. More farms. And it was HOT!! I was sweating like mad.





Two, Shiroi Koibito Factory aka chocolate factory in Sapporo. Our last day was in Sapporo. Shiroi koibito is also known as "Bai Se Lian Ren" and I tell you. It's very nice!! It's actually two layers of thin crisp biscuit with dark or white chocolate filling in the middle. This is Japan's most famous souvenirs and you can only buy it in Hokkaido and Narita Airport. It's not even sold in Tokyo.


I boughts tens of that and it costs me a bomb! Things in Japan are really expensive. Souvenirs especially. Even after I convert to SGD, I think it's very expensive. What more to say, convert to RM. That small box of biscuit costs me around SGD20. Just for ONE SMALL box. And I spent more than 10,000 yen in that shop.


Here comes the final highlights of Hokkaido trip. It's the crab meal we had in Sapporo!!


We ordered Kind Crab set each and had our best time eating kind crabs like nobody's business. In the set itself, there were crab porridge, crab toufu, grilled crab, fried crab, shabu shabu crab, shashimi crab, and boiled crab. And the crabs are all KING CRAB!! It was the best seafood meal I had so far.


It costs me a bomb and I came back with a debt to pay. Another 10,000 yen debt. And that makes a total of 90,000 yen I spent for my 5 days 4 nights trip to Hokkaido.

I'm seriously broke now because I think my Yens are not enough for me in Japan for the next two months. I still need another 15,000 yen to Disneyland and Disneysea. What about Kyoto and Hiroshima?? Darn... I need more Yens.