It’s almost towards to the end of my Hokkaido trip. Itinerary for day 6 was short and simple. It’s our last night staying in Hokkaido. I was a little of sad but also very exciting because this means we are going to Tokyo the next day! Muahaha.

Remember the beautiful Alpha Resort Tomamu? I just simply love the view that I see from my hotel room. It’s just spectacular!

Although the room is spacious, view is stunning, but I did not have a good sleep at all. Not sure why. Probably too excited about the Tokyo trip?

We had our breakfast at the Triangle Restaurant.

The restaurant was quiet. The food also nothing surprising. Some American breakfast as usual.

Everytime we reach hotel, it will be night. We do not have much time explore what’s nearby. Did not take much pictures with the Hotel buildings at all. But today we all have the chance. This resort is so different from those we stayed before.

We stayed at one of the towers last night. Above 20 floors we stayed.

Can’t help to take photo with the towers. Oh, that’s our coach and the driver uncle.

A grass field nearby the hotel.

The mountain behind will soon to be covered by snow. The 2 black line at the slope was actually where people do the skiing!

A close up. There were people cleaning up the slope and trimming the trees. They need to ensure the slope is clear for people to ski.

With Janice again. I am closer with her among other tour mates.

After departed from Alpha Resort, we were heading to see and feed swans at lakeside. Weather was even colder today.

It’s so near winter already, we can feel it. But we can’t stay longer to wait for the snow. I really wish to see snow.

We always saw something interest us along the highway. This time, we saw some horses. They were looking healthy.

Our coach driver uncle was kind enough to pull over, let us get down and take photos. He always did. :)

The journey from Alpha Resort to the lake was about 2 hours. We stop over at a rest area again after 30 minutes drive.

After the toilet break, we explore the souvenir shop nearby. We also saw some ‘orang asing’/ Aboriginal group (Ainu of Japan) house. Off coz, the Aboriginal group does not exist anymore in Japan, this is for tourist visit only.

This is a typical house that Ainu group live in.

There were people in the house, burning some woods. We dare not step in to kacau them. They do not seem pleased to see us.

Everyone climb up this small house for photograph too.

After about 30 minutes exploring and toilet break, we start our journey to the lake.

A lake side that full of wild ducks and swans! So beautiful. They were all looking so clean and approachable. Those swans were not aggressive to grab the crackers from my hand.

Seriously, I’ve never get in touch with wild live this near before. I’ve experienced few times in this Hokkaido Trip. First waas the bears (although not really touching them), then wild deers, then the seagulls and now swans.

They were so clean, feather so white.

Japan kids are cute. Their parents really know how to dress them up.

I did not feed the wild ducks, there were too many of them. I am kinda worried they will come in group and grab my food.

天鹅湖

Another cute kid.

A little history of the Utonai-ko:

“Utonai” -the place where small streams gather, the lake is fed by clear streams,including the Bibi River.”

“In May, 1981, the lake and surrounding wetlands, together covering approximately 510ha., was designated as Japan’s first  “sanctuary” ,or sacred ground for wild birds by the Wild Bird Society of Japan, with the aim of nature preservation, its promotion and enlightenment. The “sanctuary” which allows people to deepen their contact with wild birds while giving thought to protecting the regional nature is especially meaningful to be located in the developing city of Tomakomai.”

Get it? Wild birds preservation. Great!

After taking so many photos with the swans, we finally go have lunch.

Well, I was pretty pleased with the lunch.

Long table!

Wanna guess what’s inside? Famous fish in Japan.

Rice with minced Salmon. Nice!

I was trying to peek what’s inside~

Hotpot! I love it.

Yes, that’s right! Salmon fish!

All sort of seafood selling downstairs.

Some last minute shopping for the snacks.

The lunch actually took really long. Everyone has been eating for a long time and shopping at the mini mart that sells seafood, snacks downstairs.

Next we were brought to a place to see how people catch Salmon, but no luck. No one is working there. We explored to the open house nearby.

This was one of  house design.

The living room connected to kitchen and dining room.

The Kitchen

One of the rooms. With cute big soft toy in it.

This company will help you design he house and build it. One-stop service!

Can you believe this house has got a balcony at roof top? Very nice.

Guess what’s next? SHOPPING! Shopping at outlet mall!

This is Chitose Outlet Mall Rera. They have brands like Coach, Tommy Hilfiger, Nine West, Levi, Armani, Adidas, Salvatore Ferragamo, Furla, and many more.

Kelvin was explaining the map and set a time to meet up for dinner. He gave us 3 hours for shopping!

Sorry, busy shopping and walking around. Forgotten to take photos of surrounding. It’s freezing-ly cold when we walked around. We kept ourselves warm by walking into shops. Every shop has got heater on.

See the ladies with big bag small bag? haha, I’ve bought 2 coach bags anyway, HK bought Hugo Boss shirt.

Then we dinner at the Chinese Restaurant at the Outlet mall. I guess Kelvin know we all miss the chinese food already after eating Japanese food for one whole week.

Gyoza and Fried Prawn.

Fish

Chicken

Toufu

Chili Prawn

Soup

Vege

Don’t you think that’s too much for 2 person? We can’t finish everything.

Actually this outlet mall was very near to Chitose Airport. We were going to stay a night at Chitose Airport, it was easier for next day’s flight for everyone.

Wow, I never stay at Hotel in Airport. This hotel is called Com S Hotel Chitose.

Well, actually nothing to wow about. It’s pretty normal, it’s just that we can see airplanes flying from our small window. Luckily there were not much airplanes flying, or else it will be pretty noisy.

We were brought back to hotel earlier about 8 something at night. Everyone start packing the luggage. Me and HK will be flying to Tokyo for another 1 week plus. 4 of them flying to Taiwan. The rest were flying to Shanghai for the 3days 2 nights free tour (which I heard about not a very good tour because the local tour guide was bad and brought them to very commercial place like selling jade, silk, blah blah).

Oh yea, the Shanghai trip was a free add on tour when they bought the Hokkaido trip, with only one condition, which is flying with China Eastern Airline.

Well, me and Hongkiat insist to fly SQ. So we were not entitle that free Shanghai tour. Moreover, it’s sgd500 cheaper to fly with China Eastern. The Hokkaido tour package was about SGD 1950 + per pax, whereas ours one was SGD2500+ per pax.

Me, HK, Kelvin, Kevin and Janice had a drink at the bar, Kelvin was giving us some tips and must-have food at Tokyo.

I think this Hokkaido trip was very worthy! The great tour guides, fantastic scenery, fun tour mates, interesting itineraries plus the good food. Everything add up making the trip perfect. This was our first time joining a tour. I am glad that we did not make the wrong decision.

If you would like to take up Hokkaido tour package, consider signing up with Kevin from Super Travel. Make sure you have him in the tour and Kelvin as the Japan Local tour guide. Other than this combination, I won’t guarantee good results.

I’ll end my Hokkaido trip with the photos we taken before we leave to Tokyo! Oh, I can’t wait to tell about our Tokyo trip.

Me and Aunties. :)

Us with the newly wedded couple - Aaron and Sharon.

We met some nice people who are from KL also. Mr Ho and Mrs Ho.

Us with Kevin and Kelvin.

The closest bunch - Kelvin, Janice, us and Kevin.

Missing Hokkaido already.

We actually do have group photo, but they were taken using Kevin’s camera.What a pity.

Our flight to Tokyo take approximately 1.30 hours. From there onwards, we are on our own. On our own in Tokyo, one of the metropolis. Speak no Japanese and we are proud to say we survived! Haha. No lost in translation, no lost in the big city.

In the flight. Cute baby with his parents sitting in front of us.

Look at his little fat fingers.

Soon, I’ll share my Tokyo trip. Starting next post.

(This post has rather less photos compared to last one :) Slightly 20 photos lesser)

Finally I updated my day 5. Hongkiat thought I’ve gave up updating about my Japan trip. Shit. I am failed to be a blogger. Haha. Who asked him to spoil me with so many gadgets? I’ve been playing with my nds and iphone every day and night.

Okay, back to my day 5 at Hokkaido. Actually this is not consider day 5, it’s day 6 already. The night we departed from Singapore is considered day 1 already, we reach Hokkaido at Day 2. But never mind, let’s stick with my title.

(The view from the hotel room)

The morning of day 5, we missed our breakfast at the hotel. I can’t believe this. We have not missed any breakfast in the past few days. The end time of the breakfast at Sounkaku Grand Hotel was one hour earlier than the past few days. Everyone was worry about us for not showing up at the restaurant. They all thought we were sick. Actually, I did not check on the timing, it was my fault assuming every hotel has the same timing for breakfast.

Anyway, Kevin was kind to remind us there were still time for breakfast. He called our room, freaking 5 minutes before the end time. ~.~!!! Kind, but not enough la, dear.

I think he is teasing us. “Oh, you can still make it one, run to the restaurant.. Just walk in before the end time, then eat lo. I think they wont stop you one.”

That’s the story about us missing the breakfast.

Anyway, we bought the fried rice from vending machine and had the breakfast at Hotel Lobby. Just about 15 minutes before we leave the hotel.

Japanese has this culture, where the hotel staff/manage/owner will ’send off’ their guests. In what way, you may ask.

They will line up, wave goodbye, and bow to the guests. With smile on the face off coz. Wave goodbye till the bus is gone from the view.

There you go, the owner of the hotel of Sounkaku Grand Hotel, wave goodbye to us. With Kimono. It’s damn cold okay.

Then we were brought to Oobako and Kobako canyon (大函小函) of the famous Sounkyo Gorge. These canyons are just nearby the hotel.

Oobako basically means ‘big box’ and Kobako means ’small box’ in Japanese. These gorges are so imminent that they make the visitors feel like they are in a box. They are created by dramatic columnar cliffs that are greater than 100 meters in height. It was linked to the famous waterfalls which I will intro below.

Kelvin asked us to do some shouting there. :)

Dear, the focus point wrong already. :p

That couple was on honeymoon also. They were trying to do some stunt. :)

After visiting Oobako, we went to visit the waterfalls. These waterfalls were said to be top 100 waterfalls in Japan.

Let me introduce to you, the Silver River waterfalls (Gin Ga no Taki, 銀河の滝)

There is another waterfall next to Gin Ga no Taki. This is Shooting star Waterfalls (Ryu Sei  no Taki, 流星の滝). Why are they so famous? Because they were very close to each other. Both of them can be seen together from developed view points.

We walked here and there between the 2 waterfalls. Ryu Sei no Taki is slightly shorter than Gin Ga no Taki.

Gin Ga no Taki was about 120 meter in height, 394 feet.

Ryu Sei no Taki was about 90 meter.

We took quite a few photos of the surrounding.

I think we are not allow to access to the waterfalls. We can only take photos from opposite.

If there is no signboard saying this is Ryu Sei no Taki, I won’t even know there is a waterfall. It’s too tiny to see from far.

The walkway between the 2 waterfalls.

The waterfalls are not as nice as Niagara Waterfalls, but the distance of 2 waterfalls make them special. We spent almost an hour shooting at the waterfalls.

After that, we were all having lunch at Asahikawa Ramen Village. It was not too far to travel from Sounkyo to Asahikawa.

They have 8 of greatest ramen shops of Asahikawa city. This ramen village is hard to access by public transport. Luckily we are on a tour.

Eight most popular and long standing ramen shops included Asahikawa Ramen Aoba(青叶), Asahikawa Ramen Ittetsu-an Matsuda(松田), Asahikawa Ramen Ishida(石田), Ramen Shop Tenkin (天金), Ramen Santoka(山头火), Ramen Village Saijo, Original Asahikawa Ramen Ichikura (一藏) and Asahikawa Ramen Baikoken(梅光轩)

But most of us chose to eat at Original Asahikawa Ramen Ichikura(一藏), it was highly recommended by Kelvin. Ramen Santoka also highly recommended but we have that in Singapore. So no point trying something exists in Singapore.

The chilli flakes, add as many as you like. But I did not put much as I want to try the soup. Japanese Ramen is famous for its soup base.

We both ordered the Pork Ramen but with different soup base. Hongkiat ordered soy sauce soup.

Me ordered the miso soup. Very very nice soup. I had miso soup Ramen everytime we eat ramen in Tokyo! ahaha.

We also order gyoza.

Actually there are not much shops around. No other tourist spot. But there is one big uniqlo store.

Almost everyone went to Uniqlo. Singaporean actually love shopping at Uniqlo. Uniqlo in Japan is like Giordano in Hongkong.

Some shops opposite the Ramen village.

After the lunch at Ramen Village, we went and visit the Sake Brewing Museum which tells a history of 340 years sake - the most famous sake is Otokoyama (男山) Sake. This Sake is famous for it’s superior quality of Sake. Hokkaido has ideal climate and water condition to brew this sake.

“In 1977, Otokoyama won the gold medal in The Overseas Wine and Spirit Competition, the first time for “Nihon-Shu”, and has since continued to win gold successively for 32 years.” Source

Some brewing tools that used in good old days.

The most expensive sake was the most popular and famous in the world.

We didn’t want to buy the whole bottle as we are not the sake person. But we can have the chance to taste the world’s famous sake at a very cheap price. I think it’s about 150 yen per glass.

Believe it or not, it’s sweet. :)

They have a mini garden outside the museum.

This couple has a lot of poses when comes to photo shooting. They are young at heart.

We were given a chance to wear this costume for photo shooting, for free. People wear this to brew the sake last time.

The garden is beautiful, isn’t it?

Just a random photo of the shoes of us and tour mates. :)

After 1.5 hours of tasting sake and camwhoring at the mini garden, we head to the hotel of the night. It was very far from Asahikawa, it took us 2.5 - 3 hours to reach Tomamu. We were staying at Alpha Resort Tomamu.

It was a ski resort. It was the most beautiful, luxury and nicest view resort we stayed throughout the Hokkaido trip. Everything there was so unforgettable. The high-level room with breathtaking view, the open-air hot bath, the indoor swimming pool, the restaurant with forest surrounding etc.

The first thing we did when we reached Alpha Resort was to check-in to the hotel room and head to the restaurant for dinner.

They have chocolate fondue!

Hongkiat is taking kid’s meal. Haha!

Cheese Fondue too! How can I not love this Resort?

We were basically facing the forest. It will also be really beautiful if the trees are cover with snow.

The restaurant was very spacious.

Again, our tour guide Kelvin and tour lead Kevin.

This is Janice. We have become closer after the trip. We met up with each other occasionally.

The pathway to Hotel lobby.

Our room. Small living room.

The beds, dressing table. The room is consider really spacious to us. I love this resort and definitely going back there. Maybe for winter season!

After the dinner, few of us (girls) would like to go to the hot bath, with a small charges - 500 yen. It will be the last night to enjoy hot spring. We were told by Kelvin, the open-air hot spring is spectacular. We must try it or else will be regretted.

We took a shuttle bus (provided by the resort) to the Viz Spa House.

The Spa house has got a wave pool, sauna, hot bath etc.

The wave pool was soooooo damn big.

Picture I stole from the official website.

But our mission was to enjoy the hot bath. Open-air hot bath.

Kelvin was damn right! The view was spectacular!

Yes, we were facing the forest. Looking at the starry sky. Listening to the nature! If we are lucky, we might see some wild deers.

The water was hot, weather was cold, the view was fantastic. The whole experience was just amazing.

Off coz they have different room for men and women. The hot bath for men was just next to us. But they wont be able to peek la.

After about 1 hour soaking in hot bath, everyone was satisfied. We took shuttle bus back to the hotel. Guess what, we really bump into wild deers! What a thrill!

Kelvin did tell us we can hear wolves if we walk into the forest, which some of the tour mates did hear the wolves when they explore the surrounding.

One thing we missed to visit was the Unkai terrace. We could have our breakfast at the very top terrace, seeing sea of clouds!

We missed it because the cable car station was close for maintenance. They were preparing for winter. What a pity!

I ended my day 5 post with a photo I taken the next morning. This is the view from our room.

OMG, I missed my Hokkaido trip already!!!!! Winter is so beautiful there! If you are planning for a winter trip to Hokkaido, please visit Tomamu Alpha Resort!

Short because it’s only 3 days 2 nights and 55 minutes ferry ride from Singapore to Bintan.

Sweet because it’s just 2 of us, quietly celebrate our 8th anniversary being together.

Insanely luxury because we were staying at Banyan Tree Resort. This Banyan Tree Resort is rated 5 star. I had to agree. :) Everything is charged in USD.

I will shower the post with a lot of photos and short description, as per usual. That’s my style.

Our boarding pass (ferry boarding pass, no visa is required for malaysia passport holder to enter Indonesia).

We took ferry at Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal to Bandar Bentan Telani Ferry Terminal, Bintan.

Upon arrival, we went straight to Banyan Tree Resort counter at the ferry terminal. They have arranged a car to pick us up to the resort. Well, this car trip was chargeable.

I am going to show the photos in sections.

The Lobby

Unlike hotels, this is more open. I almost can’t decide where to head to check in. I thought it was some waiting area.

The welcome drink. Ginger & Lime. I think it taste pretty good.

One of the receptionists. Explaining the map of the resort.

Lobby at night.

This is a library, where you can borrow books, online with the desktop computer they have and even borrow some DVDs. We borrow few dvds to kill our time at night.

The villa

You can easily see how nice the villa is by just looking at the photos. I was attracted to the bed, the jacuzzi, the dressing room and the bathroom. Full of privacy. You can even walk around naked in the villa and no one is peeking.

The mini garden of the villa.

‘Sofa’ seat at the side.

Working desk and Mini Bar.

The bed! Very nice, isn’t it? Very romantic feel.

So Honeymoon feel. Hehe.

Corridor to the dress room on the left and bathroom on the right.

The bathroom, Hongkiat is standing inside the bathtub.

The bathtub. Not the usual white color bathtub. :)

The dressing room. They have prepared everything that you need. Hair dryer, hand shampoo, toiletries, hangers, slipper, beach slipper, tissue, hand towel, bathrobe, etc etc.

Oh oh, big mirror too.

Banana on the working desk.

Some free beverages including milk, coffee, mineral water and tea.

I mentioned about our anniversary, they thought it’s our wedding anniversary. Anyway, it’s nice of them. :)

The jacuzzi. I saw the picture from the website and I thought it was great to have private jacuzzi in villa!

We were in the jungle like that and got seaview. The photo was too bright to tell you where is the ocean.

I know it’s nice! Ngek~

The balcony. Jacuzzi is built at the balcony.

The is the view we saw at the balcony. Trees and sea!

Hongkiat shaving in dressing room.

Dining

There are few restaurants in the Banyan Tree Resort - Saffron, The cove, Tree top.

Besides dining at these restaurants, they also offer special dining experience like ‘Dinner on the rock‘, ‘Dinner at 8′, Dining at the beach pool, In villa dining, etc etc.

Initially we opt for the ‘Dinner on the rock’. We saw the very beautiful photo from the website, we were immediately attracted. This was one of the reasons we want to stay at Banyan Tree.

But guess what, weather was really bad that night. 1 hour before the dinner, it was raining. So, the restaurant people called and proposed to postpone the dinner. We agreed. But 1.5 hours later, it’s still raining. We decided not to wait anymore. We had the dinner in the restaurant instead of on the rock.

This ‘dinner on the rock’ package includes only the food but not beverages. When dining in the Saffron restaurant, the manager appointed a dedicated waiter to serve two of us. ONLY two of us.

We were not very comfortable with a dedicated waiter who always keep an eye on us. It’s not annoying but a bit stress.

Whenever we finish one dish, he will come over and clean the table. Also will talk to us, asking if we like the dish. Stress.

The Saffon Restaurant

Amuse Bouche - I think it’s make of tune, crab meat. The waiter did explain the ingredient, but I didn’t hear it clearly.

Sea Scallop and Salmon Ceviche, Guacamole and Edamame Beans Salsa. I thought this appetizer tasted weird.

Grilled Shitake Mushroom Cuppuccino with dried Porcini Dust and Truffle Oil.

We had a class of red wine.

Pan Searer Wagyu Medallions, Roasted Garlic, Artichoke Risotto (Italian Rice), Baby Carrot in Parsley Butter

Gratin of Rock Lobster and Braised Fennel, Cauliflower Puree, Champagne Beurree Blane, Smoked Avruga Caviar.

Chocolate Pralines

Chilled Summer Berries Sebayon Gratin, Champagne Ice Cream.

A very luxury dinner we had. We had wagyu beef, lobster, caviar in one meal, dedicated waiter to serve us. How great is that.

Tree Top Restaurant

The sea view we saw at Tree Top restaurant while having our breakfast.

Gorgeous!

Porridge with sausage topping! Ngek.

It’s very windy by the way.

How cool is that, having breakfast look at the ocean view.

The swimming pool, for adults only. Facing ocean view. Right outside the Spa center and Tree Top Restaurant.

Tree top restaurant  - serving Asian Food.

They have phones installed at each location, for the convenient of the guest, to call the lobby for Buggy.

We @ Buggy!

Lunch @ Tree Top Restaurant.

This lunch was after we had the massage session.

Some free buns before the meal.

We shared the Club Sandwich.

Some chocolate with baileys drink.

Hongkiat’s Ice coffee with Banana taste.

Dinner at Tree Top Restaurant.

They have the small portable lamp that clip on the menu.

The free buns with some Butter spread.

Some chicken chop with mashed potato.

Nasi Goreng set meal.

The Nasi goreng with telur goreng on top.

Soto Ayam. At first we thought its some soup, because it was listed under ’soup’. When it came, we realize it’s noodle soup.

The Beach

This is the South China Sea we are facing.

That was the Saffron Restaurant. We were standing on the rock that we were suppose to have the dinner.

The tone color was great. Blue sky, white clouds, green sea!

Hongkiat likes this picture. But I smile silly. :p

Nah nah nah.. that’s the rock la. We could have the dinner there. If there was no rain.

It was very sunny!

Oh, and windy too.

We particularly liked this coconut tree which stand alone at the beach.

I heard of sandflies. But luckily, we do not experience any sandflies bites.

For people who like sun bath, under the shade. Haha.

The pool for both adults and kids. Facing the beach, i think it’s better view than the one at Tree Top Restaurant.

The Spa Center

Some welcome drinks - Ginger & Lime.

Although it’s facing the ocean view again, but it’s indoor. They do not play any music in the room because they want us to listen to the wave. ‘Relax, peaceful’. It was really comfortable.

Some refreshment after the massage.

Lastly, some photo taken at Tree Top Restaurant.

Happy 8th Anniversary Dear!

As I said, we stayed at a very small hotel in Asahikawa town. This is the outer look of the hotel. A very typical town area hotel.

After the hotel breakfast, we were told by Kelvin we are going to Furano.  Furano is famous for its Lavender fields. Off course we are not able to see lavender at this season. But I am damn exciting that we are able to see a lot of flowers at this season.

At first, we were lucky to pluck fruits. Now we are lucky because still able to see flowers.

On the way to Furano which will take about 1 hour from Asahikawa, we passed by a famous shrine. Famous because of the visits of Japan Emperor. But I don’t get the name of the shrine.

According to Kelvin, we all can ‘drink’ the water. The ‘water’ is to ‘clean’ all our sins before we go into shrine for praying.

The surrounding was so peacefully quiet. There were no visitors, not prayers too.

The shrine.

A list of the Emperors who visited the shrine.

This was actually a money box. We as ‘normal people’ were not allowed to go into the shrine itself to pray. We can only stand here, which was outside the shrine, throw money into this box and pray.

The only day with blue sky. Lucky-nya. Because later we are going to flower farm.

One kawaii girl we met at the shrine. She was here because she is 3 years old. So? You guess what’s the big deal? Apparently, Japanese has this Shichi-go-san festive. It’s a traditional ritual and festival in Japan where 3 and 7 years old girl and 3and 5 years old boy will dress up for this Shichi-go-san festival.

KAWAIIIIIIII lor… in kimono somemore. I wanna cubit her.

My tour mates cant help but to take photo with her. I was too shy. I think she was tired of posing already.

I can’t believe we actually spent almost an hour there when no one is allowed to enter the shrine.

Failed to pose.

Better pose like this.

One of my tour mates. We gave him a lot of nicknames. He is acting pretty weird during the whole trip. Mostly talking to himself, reading the signboards loudly, practicing his qi-gong whenever he can.

Hiak!

After bili-bala at the shrine, we head to Furano- Biei. Reached a farm but no flowers. All dying already one.

Can you believe this is LAVENDER? We picked and smell. It’s indeed lavender. But not in beautiful purple color. Poor lavender, drying already.

Some colorful flowers.

Lonely tree.

Leaves are falling. Trees are getting botak, but no worries, soon they are given a white cap. :)

Killing red rose!

Biei is famous for the wide field. There we are! SUPER wide field! and the super fair face of me!

Can’t help to pose a lot and took a lot photos.

Did a Jump too. After I jump, they thought its fun.

And THEY JUMP too. Look at the round belly. HAHAHA. I mean round BELLIES… is there such a word bellies?

Since we don’t see much flowers here. we just stay a while and left.

Some silhouette pose.

Guess what, Kelvin treat us the LAVENDER Ice-cream. Only treat leng luis la. The Japanese has fully utilize lavender. They make a lot of products out of lavender, like aroma fragrance, ice cream, essential oil, shampoo, hand wash liquid, fragrance, etc etc.

How’s the taste of lavender ice-cream? Taste like lavender lo.. :p Sweet la, it’s still ice-cream ma.

Then we were brought to this Biei street, where all the buildings have the year of built labeled on the building.

It’s actually pretty sunny. I am pretending having headache. :p

Built in year 1935.

The time we visit Hokkaido was very near to Halloween day. This is why you see so many pumpkins.

This must be the Biei Station. The train was so short. Cute.

Because Biei street was on our way to the farm, therefore we stop by to see how beautiful was the street. After visiting the street, we went for our lunch.

The food was not too bad. We had some ramen with different kind of soup, Japanese curry and some pasta.

After the lunch, we spent another hour at the market below the canteen. Guess what, everyone is buying the hand cream, some essential oil, all make from lavender. Furano is lavender city ma.

Then we finally reach to our destination - Shikisai farm (四 季 彩 の 丘). It’s privately own and open for public. I am impressed. The farm was open all 4 seasons. They will make sure you have fun when visiting the farm, even winter.

They have made a calender showing what flowers you are able to see during which month. Even winter, you can go there for snowboarding, snowskiing and ride the snow motor.

Visitors can rent this truck if they didn’t want to walk too much.

Good weather, good view. I may not visit to many countries, but Hokkaido is really a nice place to visit. I am truly in love with all the scenery.

I was actually hoping to see flowers blooming. But it’s pretty impossible for this season I guess.

This view look pretty fake. But swear to god, this was what we see over there. OMG, the color is soooooo beautiful.

I love flowers with blue skies.

I told you so, very good weather.

Can’t help to take few more photos with the sun, see the effect of Hongkiat’s camera.

Some not-fully-grown sunflower. Kelvin told us the sun flowers at the back there very beautiful. When we reached, we were disappointed. How can this be beautiful.

So we thought of settling the case by taking a few photos with the sunflowers.

At least I took photos with sunflowers.

Then next to sunflowers were some pink flowers. Beautiful lor!

Must take photo with all the flowers.

Camwhoring with my husband! hahahaha. my husband.

How beautiful if they are blooming.

The snow cap mountain from far far far behind.

Walked further up to the farm, saw more flowers.

But i have no idea of the flower’s name. They might put up the names on the board somewhere.. but I didn’t see any.

FINALLY we saw the beautiful sunflowers that Kelvin was talking about.

I AM sorry kelvin, we misunderstood you. The sunflowers were truly B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L!!!!!

Faster say OH MY GOD.

Almost as tall as me. Okay la.. touching my shoulder lo.

Sunflower as big as my face. hahaha!

Nice effect hor?

That’s me and Hongkiat, doing stupid pose.

Hongkiat and his creative shot.

If you still remember, that’s our local tour leader - Kevin. Not Kelvin the tour guide.

This was the mascot of the farm. Actually I’ve took quite a few photos with the mascot, but I think this is the best.

On the way to a Photography museum. We were not allow to take any photos there. We also don’t have too much interest on the museum. This photographer was said to be the famous photographer who can took the very beautiful photos of Hokkaido.

Well, I gotto respect some art work here. (But Hokkaido is already beautiful, I can also take beautiful photos lo?) Haha. Just kidding.

Not much people showing interest to the photography museum, we were then head to the hotel of that night.

The journey from Furano to Sounkaku took approxiemately 2 hours. It was night time when we reach Sounkaku. It was the coldest night ever. I was literally shivering the moment i stepped out the bus.

Sounkaku Grand Hotel. It is a very nice hotel. Spacious room. Tatami-style. Nice buffet dinner. Great outdoor onsen.

As usual, we dropped our luggages at room before heading to dinner.

Our dinner was buffet style. All food were looking good.

They always pre-arranged the bed for you while you went out for dinner. Nicely made. The printing also look good.

Pretty spacious right? Can sleep more people in there. I think this is a family room.

We thought of wearing the Yukata for the last time. Kelvin told us, this will be the last night we stayed at Tatami-style hotel. Also the last hotel which offer free onsen. OMG, i was like, it’s now or never. I must experience the outdoor onsen before the trip end!

So I went to the onsen (please click on the link to see the outdoor onsen). Alone. For the first time. Outdoor hot spring. COLD weather. NAKED.

The experience was funny.

1. First, you need to undress yourself. Put your belongs in the locker. Can only bring a small tower. Not even enough to cover your head.

2. To make sure onsen works for you, you should weight yourself before going Onsen. So you can tell the difference after the Onsen.

3. Then you gotto bath before going to Onsen. Everyone must make sure one is clean. Enter big bathroom. Big, meaning a lot of water pipes there. 1 water pipe is cater for 1 person. A set of shampoo, body shower gel and conditioner are prepared there next to the pipe. Besides these, there were also a small chair and small pail for you to sit there and bath. Oh oh, there was a mirror too.

4. I don’t know about you, but it’s so easy to see everyone’s body. Not to peek? It’s totally hard. I am not a pervert. But I am curious. Moreover, it’s my first time.

5. I quickly took a bath. There were 4 there women in the bath room. Oh oh, in case you are wondering. This onsen is separated by man and woman. Everyone else is taking own sweet time to take bath. I wonder why. It’s so embarrassing. Okay, it’s not my culture.

6. After bath, I soak into a cold water tub. Big tub. Soak for a while.

7. Then went straight to the onsen. It was an outdoor onsen. The weather was soooo cold out there. I quickly run and soak into the hot spring. Can’t even stay 1 more second under cold weather with my naked body.

Soak in the hot spring for about 10 mins. I went again to soak in the cold water for few moments. Then went soak into the onsen again. It was very nice soaking into hot spring on such cold weather. My body was hot but the face and head feeling cold. Heheh. Luckily there was not much light out there. After I soak in the onsen for a while, then came another 2 woman. 1 old 1 young. But cant see them clearly la. :p

After about 20 minutes, I decided to come out from onsen. I took another bath before I come out.

Oh, off coz we were not allow to take photo. But you can click on the link to see the outdoor onsen.

I found the rest of them not yet went for onsen but having fun playing badminton and ping pong. Apparently, we have few talented ping pong players in the group! Wow.

Kelvin has booked the court upon arrival. I watched them playing for about 1 hour. I was not playing because I already took a bath after onsen, I didn’t wanna sweat anymore.

After that, me and Hongkiatk decided to take a walk around the hotel.

The hotel lobby.

Some snack that I bought from the mini mart in the hotel.

This chocolate biscuit was good.

And Hongkiat tapao-ed the Fried rice. Haha. Bought from the vending machine again.

I ended my post with the photo I took the next morning, from the room window.

Happy New Year!!

As you can see, the pattern of our Hokkaido trip was slow and relaxing. We did spend a lot of time on bus. Traveling from one city to another city took 2-3 hours sometimes.

Day 3 trip was considered the most rushing day of the whole Hokkaido trip because we were traveling between 3 cities, from Sapporo to Otaru, then to Asahikawa.

The breakfast at APA Resort was normal. A normal American breakfast. I guess they can’t really make it anything different than American breakfast, not all tourist like to eat rice for breakfast ba. Japanese breakfast sure got rice.

After the breakfast and check out from the hotel, Kelvin (Japan Tour Guide) brought us to the Sapporo Salmon Museum. Why museum? Because it was located very near to APA Resort.

Well, museum is always being labeled as boring place. Anyway, I did learn a bit about Salmon. Kelvin is a very knowledgeable tour guide. He can explain really well about the history of Salmon.

Almost everyone is listening to him. :p

After that, we visit the aquarium. There were few fish tanks there showing different stage of Salmon fish. From the eggs to a grown fish.

Now you see the real Salmon fish. It’s ugly. Hahaha. But they taste good :p

Then everyone also take photo outside the museum. You know, tree with autumn color again.

We saw christmas tree also. I can imagine it will look very nice cover with snow!

The outer look of the Salmon museum. The environment is green and clean. Well, I must admit that Japan is a very clean country. Trash bin is hard to be found in the city. I have to keep my own used tissue paper/garbage in my bag first, then throw in hotel room trash bin.

After visiting the museum, we went visit Asahi Beer Factory. There were few factories in Japan, headquater was located at Tokyo. A lot of people might be thinking, why visiting factories of products? I only eat them, I don’t need to know how it’s produced.

But you won’t force yourself visiting these factories if you are not in a trip.

I have no idea what the signboard writing about. But I guess it was about beer promotion, try out their beer for 600 yen or something like that.

A kawaii Japanese staff was assigned to explain the process of brewing Asahi beer. Kelvin the tour guide was doing the translation to all of us.

All Asahi Products. I am surprise to see so many. Especially the snacks.

Some Asahi posters. Very old school and retro. Hongkiat loves them very much.

After learning about the brewing process, we were led to a resting place where we were given a complimentary glass of asahi beer. Hongkiat tried the stout and me tried out the Asahi ‘Dry’ draught. The “Dry” draught was very good. I stop the staff from pouring me a full glass of beer, I worried that I cant finish it.

Cute staff. :) She was trying to sell beer.

Everyone was tasting the Asahi beer and having some complimentary packets of nuts.

After visiting the Asahi Beer Brewing Factory, we went for seafood lunch at Otaru.

Another big canteen cum market.

We can buy fresh seafood from the market, then they will cook on the spot. Any additional seafood we buy will be additional expenses from own pocket. A normal seafood meal already included.

Me and Hongkiat decided to try abalone for real, for the first time. We chose a big abalone from the tank. It’s a live abalone. It’s moving. It’s a big as my palm. It cost us 6000 yen. A luxurious lunch.

Why does seafood never look appetizing before they are cooked?

The famous King Crab. Look more like spider.

Some dried seafood like dried scallop.

The Canteen.

Our lunch was not bad. A fish, small steamboat pot and rice.

I don’t know what fish is this. hehe

Small steamboat pot. Got meat ball, vege and toufu.

Japanese rice.

There were always some topping for you to put on the rice, like this salmon topping. Me like it.

We actually watch the abalone being ‘burn’ till it is cooked.

The abalone was moving actively, like struggling.

After 10 minutes it was being ‘burned’, it was about half cooked already. The staff there came collect the abalone, clean it and cut into pieces. Then the abalone was put in a small bowl, put butter and lemon on top, cook for another 10 minutes before it’s being served.

Well, the first 2 pieces i had, it taste a bit weird. Like I was chewing some rubber like that. But my third piece, it was great. Probably it’s more cooked.

After the luxury lunch, we went to the famous Otaru canal. I don’t even know it’s famous till Kelvin said so. There was a famous Japan movie, Love Letter, was filmed at Otaru. The movie got very famous till it makes Otaru became more famous. Actually, I don’t know much about Hokkaido. I am glad I learn a lot from this trip.

If I got time, I will definitely watch Love Letter. I want to know how beautiful is this Otaru or Otaru canal.

The little store. Note that the weather at that moment was about 14.5 degree Celsius. Cold.

The famous Otaru steam clock.

“This steam clock was made by Canadian clock maker Raymond Sounders in the same fashion as the clock built in 1977 in Vancouver’s “Gas Town”. Made of bronze, it is 5.5 m in height, 1 m in width and 1.5 tons in weight. The clock itself is electrically operated, and a computer controls the steam-producing boiler. the clock chimes on the hour, and the steam chimes play a five-tone melody every 15 minutes. The steam clock in front of the Main Building of the Otaru Music Box Museum is also very popular as a backdrop for posing for photos”

When you are at Otaru, you must visit this Otaru Music Box Museum. There were lotsa different kind of musci box. We did not take any photos inside. It was very spacious, high ceiling, red brick building. If you have enough time, you may want to take a course learning to make music box. You can choose and craft your own music. Off course, there will be a price to pay for this course. But I thought this might be interesting. Too bad we can’t stay any longer. The course will take 1 hour and reservation must make in advance.

I bought one cute pooh bear music box anyway. How can I not buy something from there. :D

Kelvin advice everyone to try on the home made ice cream. 6 different tastes of ice cream in a cup/ cone - Milk, Strawberry & Milk, Banana, Kiwi, Yubari Melon and chocolate. I actually like the Melon taste a lot. Eating ice-cream at cold weather, imagine that.

Both of us finish the cup of ice-cream. It cost 500 yen.

After visiting Otaru, we continue to visit the very famous Shiroi Koibito Park. This is a super must visit place in Sapporo, Hokkaido.

Firstly, it’s a kind of theme park, owned by Ishiya Chocolate. The theme park was like disneyland lor. The buildings, the shops, cafe etc.

Very nice right? Can you imagine by just selling chocolates can earn this much? Building own castle! Moreover this Ishiya only sold in Hokkaido. You can’t buy the same brand at other place. No other place in Japan selling Ishiya chocolate. Except Narita Airport in Tokyo.

We then went inside the building. You can never guess it’s actually a factory. Ishiya Chocolate factory!

This is how they work. We were standing at the observation level. Take a closer look at the wall decorations. It’s such a cheerful environment to work. You do not have to face only machines and chocolates.

I guess this was because the factory is open for public visit. They have to decorate it.

This Big screen was inside the factory. The was a camera capturing visitors from far.

We found this super duper kawaii and beautiful little girl in a class. A class to teach people to make your own cookies.

Look at her satisfying cute little face. I think she was happy with her work.

After finish visiting the factory, we were led to a mini museum.

Where they collect figure like this. Ghost Rider.

Ultraman! Haha. A lot more Japanese cartoon characters.

Upstairs was the mini museum. Downstair was where you can buy Ishiya Chocolate. Oh yea, we were given a complimentary piece of Shiroi Koibito Cookies when we enter the factory. It taste really good. Love at first bite.

That’s  our tour lead - Kevin.  I bought few boxes of the Ishiya Chocolates for friends and family. It’s not cheap. It was about 4000+ Yen for a box of 52 piece cookies.

Everyday about 5pm, the ‘castle’ will have a show. There will be cute figures coming out from the castle, ‘dance’ and sing to visitors. It’s like a cuckoo bird clock, when it’s time, it will come out and announce the time like that. But we did not pay any attention to the show, because we were busy taking photos with mini houses.

Kelvin told us to get on bus after the show finish, therefore we must make sure we have enough time to take photos with the surrounding before get on the bus. We did not want to waste time on watching the show.

Cute lor hor :D

The fountain.

The show last for 15 minutes. Everyone was being called to board the bus and head for dinner.

I thought the dinner for day 3 was quite ordinary except this time round, we were not sitting in big canteen but a restaurant like. This restaurant was empty. It seems like the staff there were waiting for our arrival and prepare to serve us.  The table was set properly before we arrive.

I like this Scallop sashimi.

Hongkiat and his ‘finish eating’ pose.

After the dinner, we had a city tour. We went to Ashikawa. Kelvin said we shoul tour around the red light district there. So he brought us there. Imagine whole bunch of tourist walking on the street when Kelvin was pointing the building and explaining those buildings were night clubs, brothel, blah blah.

It’s not hard to imagine how booming was the prostitution business in Japan. They had people wearing nice suit standing on the street, giving out brochures for their brothel. There were colorful neon lights signboard with lotsa pretty sexy girls photos hanging on the buildings.

We tour one round on the street for about 15 minutes, then fast fast get on bus and head to hotel.

I won’t say I learnt much from the tour, but it just an eye-open tour lor. I am not really interested in prostitution la. I did not take any photo There were so many people on the street. I dare not take photo of those boards that full of sexy girls’ photo.

I shall end my day 3 post with the hotel room photo. This hotel was by far the smallest room we stay during the Hokkaido Trip.

Presenting - Hotel Crecsent Asahikawa. According to Kelvin, it’s small because we were in city area. It’s pretty normal that the room was smaller compare to all the previous hotel we stayed.

I will blog faster for the rest of my days in Japan. I wish I wont delay much longer. Haha. Make me miss Japan so much.

Woke up in the morning, seeing such beautiful lake view. I took a deep breathe. A fresh one.

It’s about 7 am in the morning Japan time.

We have to get prepared by 8.30am. Be prepared meaning pack the luggage, check out the room, take breakfast and be ready to meet at the hotel lobby.

Breakfast at the Lake Toya Tensyu Hotel was as great as the dinner. There were American style breakfast and Japanese style breakfast.

After breakfast, our first destination was the Fruit Farm. We were going to experience the fruit plucking at one of the local fruit farms (at Sobetsu, near the hotel).

On the way to Fruit Farm.

Cute Japanese House. They actually bought the land, then hire developer to build the house from scratch. From designing to build and to interior design.

Therefore all houses are unique in their own way.

This was an optional tour. Reason being this fruit tour not included in the package was because there might not be any fruits survive during this season. In order not to disappoint anyone, the travel agent did not want to include in the tour package but make it optional (meaning pay extra). We were again lucky to see fruits.

Since this was a paid tour. We were allowed to pluck and eat as much as we like, but not allow to ‘tapao’ or take away.Fruits were so fresh that we can pluck directly from the tree and eat on the spot. Don’t even need to wash.

The radish was so freaking big and long.

Since not everyone interested in fruits, and due to the reason of ‘need to pay’, there were only about half of us join this fruit tour.

We were introduced to the farm owner. This lady owner immediately demonstrated how to cut the apple with “Aporu Cutto”. “Aporu Cutto” is apple cutter in Japanese English.

The apple was so big compare to what we normally had. At that moment, I really wish to buy that apple cutter, but then it might be totally useless to me as I don’t always eat fruits.

We were able to see prunes, grapes, pears and apples in the farm. Only grapes were not too mature enough to be eaten.

This is not green apple. It’s still yet to be mature.

I find this Aporu cutto very interesting. So I gave it a try.

It was so fun. Just one push and the apple are being cut into pieces. :p

The apple was so big that we both can’t even take more than 1 apple. We ate 1 apple, 1 pear and few prunes. Moreover, we just had our breakfast.

He was posing with the biggest pear he found.

The pear very big right? Almost as big as my face.

Grapes!

I tried one of the grapes. It was sweet. At the same time, the color of the grapes was sooooo purple. Scary kind of purple. I dare not take another one. Somemore it’s not ready to be eaten.

This 2 smaller apples were ’souvenir’ from the Farm owner.

After 1 hour of plucking fruits and camwhoring with the apple/pear/grapes, we went back to the hotel to pick up the rest of the tour mates.

Then we went to second destination – Nakajima National Forest. We took a cruise ride across Lake Toya, the cruise will go around the Nakajima Island.

The cruise terminal was located near to our hotel last night.

We were cruising across the Lake Toya and around Nakajima Island. Nakajima Island was formed by 4 small island.

One of the small island of Nakajima Island. I don’t even know the name.

The mainland.

During the cruise ride, we saw some seagulls. Kelvin (Japan tour guide) taught us to feed seagulls with crackers. Everyone was so exciting. Hongkiat also busying taking photos of us feeds the seagulls.

The seagulls actually flew parallel with the cruise and at the same time need to peck the cracker that we hold.

Another interesting activity to me. I’ve never fed birds before. Haha! City girl ma. :p

After 20 minutes of cruising across the lake, we finally arrived to Benten Island. There was a National Forest which keeps wild deer in the island. We were told by Kelvin that we can feed deer in this forest. We can even touch them at very close distance.

Being a city girl, I was never experience all this nature stuff la. So it was very interesting. The whole feeding and camwhoring with wild deer.

Kelvin brought us to the entrance of the forest, where we can go one step nearer to the wild deer.

See, feed deer at this close! But the saliva….

We fed deer for more than 30 minutes, finished few big packs of crackers, then I run to wash my hands. Full of deer’s saliva. :D

We then take the cruise back to the terminal. Everyone start camwhoring with the trees there. Trees with autumn colors.

Beautiful but yet it looks fake.

We wait till everyone gone, then only we start to take photo.

There was no good take. Because the cameraman kept kacau-ing us.

Camwhore better. Hongkiat’s camwhoring skill has improved! :p

Our next destination to Showa-Shinzan took approximately 15 minutes from the terminal. Showa-Shinzan is one of the youngest mountains in Japan. It’s volcano.

“Accompanied by earthquakes, the mountain suddenly rose from a flat wheat field to its current height of 290 meters between 1943 and 1945. The mountain was named “Showa New Mountain” according to the contemporary reign of Emperor Showa (1926-1989). ” (source)

This showa-shinzan still actively smoking.

There we were, the first group photo, with Showa-Shinzan as background.

After photo taking session, we were brought to big canteen for lunch. There were few markets cum big canteen facing the showa-shinzan.

We had something similar to ‘tekpanyaki’ as lunch. Every couple has one built-in big pan on the table. We then heat the pan, cover the pan with butter, pour all the materials on the pan, vegetables at the bottom, prawn and salmon on top.

The prawn and salmon were let smoke on top of the vegetables.

The whole thing turn out pretty good. I kinda enjoy the lunch, I always like tekpanyaki.

After lunch, we walked around the markets. Bought some cute souvenirs. Maybe will show in later post. :)

Cigarettes vending machine! It’s not rare in Japan, but I was seeing it for the first time.  Off coz in later days, I am no longer surprise to see it.

In order to purchase cigarettes from the vending machine, one must have a TASPO card. TASPO basically means “Tobacco Passport”. This TASPO card system is to prevent kids under age 20 to buy cigarettes.

How to buy/obtain the TASPO card? None of my business. MUAHAHAHA. Go read up the wiki page i put above.

About 30 minutes after the lunch, we were heading to our next destination - Jigokudani or “Hell Valley”.

“Jigokudani or “Hell Valley” is a spectacular, appropriately named valley just above the town of Noboribetsu Onsen, which displays hot steam vents, sulfurous streams and other volcanic activity. It is a main source of Noboribetsu’s hot spring waters.” (source)

It was so foggy when we reached there and it was raining a bit. We did not manage to take a good picture of the whole scenery.

Why do people call it hell valley? It was due to the steep cliffs and hot water steaming out from the earth’s surface.

From the picture we took, can’t tell it’s fog or steam. hehe. But we do not feel any heat. Probably too cold already. I am sure it looks nicer without the fog.

Then we climb up some stairs for side view.

Since we were not going to stay here for onsen, and the day was getting darker and it’s still raining, we left the hell valley to go to next place. We were going to town area for little shopping and dinner.

One hour journey from Hell Valley to Sapporo. The capital city of Hokkaido.

This might not be the must-go place, but we were introduced to the Sapporo City hall. Nothing much to see there actually. What can you possibly expect from a city hall, a government office?

So all of us just took 1 round to look-see look-see there.

After city hall, we then go to this tower. I can say this should be the must-go place for tourist, the Sapporo TV tower. Yea I know, the Effiel Tower in Paris is the famous one, this one definitely can’t be in the comparison. But I am not in Paris ma.

We did not go up to the observation deck. We all get down of the bus at the TV tower area. Then we were told to do a little shopping at the nearby shopping centre for 90 minutes. After that we will go for dinner.

You will be surprise how much demage can be done within 90 minutes. Everyone also big bag small bag when they board the bus. Keke. Me myself bought the very first burberry blue label bag. :p Also bought some Hokkaido local snacks, where they claims only sold in Hokkaido. You know how Japanese products like to be exclusive ge la.

Guess what we had for dinner? It’s CRAB BUFFET!

We ate King Crab, 毛蟹 (Chinese Mitten-Handed Crab? WHAT?) and 长脚蟹.

EAT ALL THE CRAB YOU CAN!

I ate quite a few ‘legs’. It was eat-all-you-can buffet. They only provide Legs and Gong.

There was a hotpot as extra dish

We were not able to finish the hotpot. I love the 长脚蟹 the most. It was so fresh and can easily crack the shell. King crab taste a bit salty to me, as in, i can taste the sea water like that. Don’t really like it. While 毛蟹 looks really ugly, I didn’t even try it. It comes as a whole. It has got a lot of crab eggs inside. GELI!

After the satisfying crab buffet, we finally check-in to the hotel. APA Hotel & Resort was the biggest hotel in Sapporo.

It definitely looks really grand. Big entrance. High ceiling.

A - Class Hotel Lobby.

Oh, you can rent the Japan famous transparent umbrella from this machine.

This was the first night we had internet access.

APA Resort has onsen also. But then again, I was still very shy. Still new to the bathtub sharing idea ma.

We explored the hotel a bit and found an amazing food vending machine.

Vending machine that sell MEE GORENG wo.

Once we put in the coins, we were instructed to wait for a certain time before the food deliver to us.

Fried Noodle.

Fried Chicken and Fries.

Surprisingly it taste really good.

Normal lo.

It’s not hard to think how this whole thing works. It has got a big microwave inside to heat up those frozen food.

Interesting lo. :p

We had a good night sleep.

I’ll end my 2nd day post with 2 pictures I took the next morning. The outside view from our hotel room.

The day we decided to make Japan as our honeymoon trip, I’ve started my usual routine - check out the places we wanna go, read forums, watch over the currency rate, know-how about the visa application, etc. It will be autumn and near to winter when we visit Japan.

We booked Hokkaido tour during Natas Fair in Singapore and extend the return flight. We wanted to extend our stay at Tokyo after the Hokkaido tour. I know, exciting right? Ok, i heard ‘expensive’ too.

A brief picture to you before I start my 2 weeks holiday:

8 days 7 nights Hokkaido (tour package) + 9 days 8 Nights Tokyo (Free and Easy).

Let’s start with Singapore International airport. We always reach early to the airport. I know about online check in, but still I didn’t want to be too late. Oh btw, we are flying with SQ.

Hongkiat was doing some preparation for his upcoming blog post.

We took 6 hours plus to reach Nagoya Airport. Waited 2 hours at the airport before boarding to Chitose Airport (Hokkaido). There is no direct flight from Singapore to Hokkaido, therefore we transit at Nagoya.

Nagoya is a boring airport. Not much shops around. Probably we didn’t explore enough. The passengers that took the same flight with us were all Japanese. It’s like Subang Airport, everyone go there take domestic flight. :)

The announcements that made in the airport and on the plane were all in Japanese. It’s really like no foreigner who does not understand Japanese will take flight here like that. Felt a bit miserable, alienated.

Flying over some mountains. One of the the flight attendances did try her best to tell us what mountains we were crossing, but I have no idea what she was talking about.

It was beautiful when Hongkiat zoomed in and shoot. My LX3 definitely can’t reach that far. :)

After 2 hours of flight from Nagoya to Chitose, we met with our tour guide (from Japan), group leader (from Singapore) and tour group (about 20 of them). They were flying from Shanghai to Chitose with China Eastern Airline. Well, they were taking different airline, so transit differently.

The first thing we do when we reach Chitose, we head to lunch. 29 tourmates, 1 local tour guide and 1 group leader were all sitting in a coach. It was about 12pm local time. We were brought to a big food court, no, a big canteen.

We are all familiar with most of the Japanese food. Also quite familiar with how to eat and handle the food.

The Hotpot. Just like steamboat la.

Sashimi. You are not suppose to throw it to the hotpot to cook it! You are suppose to eat them raw! But the uncle sitting in front of us, guess he didn’t like raw meat, he throw the ebi sashimi into the hotpot. What’s funny about the act was, he think for a while and decided to throw the sashimi into hotpot after the group leader told him to eat raw.

Scallop.

Inside the hotpot - Prawn and Salmon and bean sprout.

This big canteen was actually a market. Market selling stuff downstairs and canteen upstairs.

Weather was good, considering no raining and no sun. It was about 11 degree at that moment.

I was so exciting to see such colorful vending machines. :p (But then no more exciting about these vending machines after 1 day in Hokkaido)

Big ice cream cone like this was seen everywhere in Japan. Indicating ice cream were sold here. Yes, soft ice cream.

Saw Corn kitkat and Pumkin kitkat there, but didn’t buy any and try. A bit regretted. It says “Hokkaido Only”.

After eating the lunch, we were brought to Noboribetsu Bear Park. Almost an hour drive to the bear farm. By the time we reach there, it’s close to 3.30pm.

Everyone in the tour took picture with this bear. :p

We gotto take a cable ride up to the hill before we reach the bear park. Cable ride was never Hongkiat’s favourite.

All the leaves has got different color. So Autumn-ly beautiful! Ahaha.

Another beautiful moment Hongkiat managed to catch. It was taken during the cable car trip.

Then we reached the bear park. All the bears has got a name and age labeled on the board. But I bear know it meh… all the bears look the same to me, how to differentiate which one is which?

We bought some cookies to feed them. In order to get fed, they have to attract our attention. They will either stand up or wave to us. I don’t know what other people think, but i think they were smart to get attention from tourist. :p We even recorded the actions in video.

The bear park was closing at around 4.00pm, we can’t stay any longer. But tour guide quickly brought us to a higher observation deck to see Lake Kuttara.

It was beautiful. But bearly unlucky, we can’t stay longer because the park keeper kept on shoo-ing us. We have to take a cable car ride back to where we from. Oh By the way, the don’t call it cable car, instead they call it Rope Way. :D

Japan is one hour faster than Malaysia/Singapore. Day is shorter than night at this season. Sunset start around 4pm. It will be night by 5.30pm.

Then we took another 1 hour from Noboribetsu to our hotel of the night - Toya Park Hotel Tensyo. It was the biggest hotel at Lake Toya.

To me, the hotel consider pretty big and grand. It has got outdoor onsen (hot spring), big restaurant (More like a canteen), mini mart (souvenir shop), pachinko, slot machines etc etc.

The local tour guide (I am going to call him Kelvin from now on) said we were very very lucky.

1. Our rooms are facing the lake view. Totally awesome.

2. There will be fireworks events at about 8.50pm. It was because there were some VIP staying at the same hotel, therefore the hotel arrange the firework events. Double the awesomeness.

Lucky right? Staying at hotel only, can see fireworks. where to find?

Upon checking in to the hotel, it’s dinner time. We dined in the big restaurant of the hotel. Very high ceiling, buffet style of dinner.

We were told to experience the Japanese culture. Kelvin suggest we all wearing the Yukata that hotel provided. After dinner, relax for at least 30 minutes and head straight to Onsen.

Isn’t he looking cute in yukata? :p

Almost everyone wear the yukata and meet up at the restaurant. It’s our first night afterall. :p

Most of them are Japanese. Lake Toya is a very famous spot in Hokkaido. Even japanese themselves will come here for holiday. :)

The food in the restaurant were all good. So many choices and taste good actually.

Shiok. This dinner actually set a hig bar for the rest of the journey. haha. Off coz we were talking about the food in hotel, I mean, no one expect hotel food would be good. :p

Hongkiat with this satisfying face.

Talk about onsen, I dare not go. The idea of sharing big bath tub with all the strangers got me chicken out. I did persuade myself: Oh come on, you have come this far to Japan, just experience the culture. But then, I can’t. Not for the first day. I didn’t wanna see my tour mates naked body. Haha.

Kelvin told us, the onsen in the hotel has a very nice view. Again, it’s lake view. Oh, and it’s outdoor. I can imagine how great the view would be if it’s day time. I can also imagine how great it would be bathing in hot spring during cold weather.

But, excuse me, for the first day. I am not joining.

So we decided to get change because we want to see fireworks at the lake side. We can choose to see the fireworks in the room but we thought it would be better view to see it outside.

We walk around in the hotel, visit the mini mart and pachinko center.

Hongkiat was excited to see Ice-cream vending machine. So he decided to buy 1 ice-cream (130 yen).

Slot machines.

We underestimated the cold weather. We were not that cold when we check in to the hotel. But it was so much colder after the dinner. It was like below 10 degrees. The longer we stand by the lakeside to wait for the fireworks, the colder we felt.

But everything worth it. The fireworks last for 30 minutes. They were so beautiful.

Guess what make the cold weather even colder? WIND! We were literally shivering when the wind blow right on our face. Hehe! What an experience.

Okay, no point I put up all the fireworks pictures here. But these fireworks were not those cheap cheap one. Good quality right? Almost like what we saw during New Year celebration! I was really happy to see the fireworks.

Now it’s time for a good sleep. We did not rest well for the whole day. Long hours flight and a whole day journey visiting here and there.

Room was spacious.

This was how it looks before the dinner.

Yea, i know.. Tatami Style!

But after the dinner, there were people help to arrange the bed. Then the room look like this.

Once you look at this, you know it’s comfortable! The blanket can really keep us warm. I was actually awake caused of sweating. We didn’t even on the heater in the room and also let the windows wide open.

But I had a good night sleep. :D

I’ll end my day 1 post with the lake view I see the next morning when I walk to the window

This is the Lake Toya. Great view? Too bad we only stay for 1 night.

1. I realized most of my friends view my facebook photo album more than here. Well, off coz lor, there more faster and easier. I don’t have to resize pictures and upload. Loading hundreds of pictures at my blog is killing their bandwidth. And they are more responsive at FB than at my blog. Lazy bunch of people who are not willing to comment in my blog. :p

So I shared my wedding photos at FB. If you are in my FB friend list, you will be able to view the albums.

But let’s randomly share some dinner photos here. From the photos, you can see the 3 gowns that I was wearing for that dinner. Okie, not 3 gowns, but 1 white gown, 1 evening gown and 1 Kua.

My pretty colleagues who came from Singapore, but none of them are Singaporean. Singapore has a lot of imported talent. Haha.

The only family photo i had for that night. Sigh. I mean, the family photo taken with my family.

My mom is not in the picture. Sad.

2. I was back from our luxury Japan honeymoon trip last week. Bought a lot of stuff for myself. Japan is my dream country and I am so happy that it’s our honeymoon. Very memorable. I am gonna share the experience and photos later. I can’t wait to tell you all about Japan that I know.

Met a bunch of funny chap during the Japan trip. We are going to have a small gathering this coming weekend and planning a pot luck for Christmas.

I will start to compose those posts after this. Gonna choose photos to share here. Not much, we just took 4000 plus photos for 2 weeks. :D

3. We have moved out from Yishun as well in the very same week we’re back from honeymoon. Exhausted, tiring. I liked the new house at Ang Mo Kio. It’s spacious compare to Yishun one. But it’s not too near to the MRT station. Gotto get used to the distance.

I realized there were not much kopitiams around my area. Probably we haven’t explore enough. Need to spend more time in exploring. AMK hub (shopping center with big FairPrice) is within walking distance, well.. about 10 minutes walk. Consider far la, has been really spoilt coz last time in Yishun, we walk only 5 minutes to North Point (shopping center with Cold Storage).

4. Suddenly wanted to travel around the world (at least, more of Japan, Taiwan, Europe, Australia, USA) while I am still ‘young’. Well, who doesn’t want to have this luxury, having enough money to travel the world without working? Just let me dream.. dream first. :) Wish me dream come true, very soon, okay?

5. I was feeling a bit not well after shifting house. Caught a cold, headache and hard to breathe. I guess I ate too much dust that cause me having difficulty to breathe. I had this problem since … young but not frequent. I’ve never consult with doctor before because it always recovered in few days time.

So I went see doctor and tell her about this problem for the first time. She told me that I might have asthma. This idea is new to me. I never identify it as Asthma. She gave me some medicine and inhaler. Well, I took 1 time and I felt better. Not too sure if I am really having asthma. Going to find out soon. Guess I didn’t really know about my health well.

I slept around 2am the night before my wedding day. In fact, I gotto wake up in 4 hours time.

I woke up around 5.30am in the morning, I bath and blow dry my hair. I facebooked a while because I woke up the earliest and waiting for the makeup artist to come.

Makeup artist came at 6.30am and my photographer Ave came at 7am. Both of them came on time as promised! This is what we call professional!

I am putting captions for each photo if possible. Let’s begin.

This is one of the wedding gifts I got from my friend Kenny.

I thought I look tired in the picture.

Blissful.

Hand bouquet ordered from my cousin.

These are some games that my jimuis prepared for the heng dais. A lot of feedbacks saying my jimuis are creative! Bravo girls! :)

I love my mom! She smile all day long~ My brother look handsome also.

My mom and dad. Well, off coz. Who else will help me put on veil?

My Grandmother who is most exciting about me getting married. :D

My jimuis gang. I made them wear hot pink! I love them all. So Supportive and cooperative!

Well, I asked them to push to show some cleavage, but they never. End up me only pushing.

Kinda love this picture.

Final touch up on my hair.

They are ready! Waiting for the groom. Ngek ngek ngek.

She is the tallest, so she did not wear high heels! But instead, wearing 17 year old girl’s shoe. Haha.

Jumping on high heels!

Here comes the groom and heng dais. Red undies is the first task~

My relatives are staying inside to see how jimuis playing the heng dais.

Inspecting the red underwear.

Second task - Tie the egg around the waist and bang the egg to the wall.

The broken egg with I love you written on red underwear.

Here comes the 3rd task - posing as what shows in the picture. Oh, those are pre-wedding photo, very new trend!

Heng dai on action.

4th Task - 1 guy carry another guy, put on lip tick, turn few rounds and kiss on a paper to make a love shape.

Merry go round… la la la.

Well, must be discussing about the 开门利是.  Bribing the jimui to open the door. :p

There it is. The bribe~

All the cheerful audience. Kekeke

This is the final task - wear the stocking and pretend to be a robber. To rob the bride!

A gang of robbers lead by Hong kiat the groom!

Oh, I have been waiting for long, alone in the room.

I thought he look hilarious with the stocking on his face. hehe~

Aw…

After rounds of clearance, he finally made it to my room. Look how tiring he was. Muaks

My grandparents. They keep telling how happy they were about me marrying Hongkiat. Love them.

My dad is giving a final task for HK.

He gotto use a ladle that tie around his waist to hit the pan that tie around my waist. To test if he is ‘capable’ wo… my naughty dad!

KONG! the Loudest one.

Mom is drinking the sweet tea hand by HK. :p

My wedding gift from my mom.

Jace is being really naughty to hail a big bowl of tea to HK, her 姐夫.

A full cup of tea. From my sister.

I guess it’s weird for Wan Shen to call Hongkiat as Biu jie fu. :p

Finally step out of the door. Daddy should cover me instead of HK lo. :p

Entering HK’s house.

I know how heavy it is to carry me with the heavy gown. LOL

Hongkiat and His Heng Dais. Good brothers~

Me offer tea to my father in law. 笑到见牙不见眼. He said he is not used to hear me calling him father. :p

I am a ‘new member’ to Lim’s family.

Hongkiat’s grandmother so cute, posing with V.

This picture looks a bit funny. Can’t tell which part is funny.

Jimuis and heng dais.

That’s all I have for now. The full set of photos and videos will sent to me after I am back from my honeymoon, which will be next month. I cant wait for those. :p

Meanwhile, here is the video of the morning session.

(in order to play this video, you gotto installed quicktime player.)

Wedding preparation is really a tiring process. Although my mom and mom-in-law help us a lot but still we gotto make all the decisions. They worry we might not like it if they decide for us.

For the past 12 months, we have made several important decisions like choosing the wedding date, restaurant, bridal package, photoshooting venue, ROM date, decorate the bridal room, gor dai lai, bridal car deco, guest list, wedding card, wedding eve buffet, etc etc.

Now that I think back, it’s amazing that me and HK never argue about anything when discussing about wedding stuff. I am glad that he leaves all final decisions to me. It may sound like one man show, but I guess he just want me to be happy about what I decide.

Choosing wedding date - July 2008
After mom-in-law proposed the idea “you both should get married” (now you finally know why are we getting married. Yes, the proposal story i posted previous was made up by me. :p), we gathered our D.O.B and sent to Loh Tit Pat. Apparently Loh Tit Pat is very famous in getting you the wedding dates based on our birthdates and chinese zodiac.

Then few weeks later, Loh Tit Pat gave us a list of dates which were good for us. I filtered and think that 3rd Oct 2009 is the best. I love the fact that it is mooncake festival and it’s Saturday. Saturday meaning everyone can enjoy and get drunk without worrying working the next morning.

Choosing Restaurant - August 2008
Before we book any restaurant, we need to work out roughly how many tables of guests we want to invite. It’s unbelievable when I heard my father-in-law will need at least 35 tables, plus 5 from mom-in-law, plus another 10 from my parent’s side. Meaning it’s already 50 for relatives and parents’ friends. I was thinking, the most friends me and hk can invite would be 10 tables only.  So, I search for restaurants which can hold up to 55 to 65 tables.

I look up at the Malaysian Bride forums, but it did not give me much helps because not much user input. After few rounds of filtering, I called up to Damansara Palace at Kota Damansara, Tai Thong Tropicana and Flower Drum Banquet. But Tai Thong Tropicana and Flower Drum Banquet were fully booked. Damansara Palace is not really an ideal place because of the weird floor plan.

Finally, we thought of Royal China Jalan Ampang. Quickly went for a look and place our booking. Luckily the date still available. We’ve dined in there for several times, thinking it was not bad. We do not hesitate much and go ahead placing deposit of RM3000.

We booked the restaurant within a month after we got the wedding date. It was around August 2008. Imagine we gotto book the restaurant 14 months in advance!

Booking a hotel ballroom? I know the environment is far more better than a restaurant, higher ceiling, bigger stage, prettier decorations, nicer serving but they are way out of budget. Totally not worth. You know why? Inviting guests of more than 50% of people whom you don’t know is one of the main reason why. :p

Bridal Package - November 2008

I did post a bit on the bridal shop that we chose. How did we end up signing up with Julia Wedding News?

At first, I thought of hiring freelancer photographer, rent some gowns, hire makeup artist and fly to somewhere else for photoshooting. After calculating all the keling sum, this idea is kinda time consuming and troublesome.

Should go back KL’s bridal shop for cheaper rate? Hmm, the traveling is killing too much time. Not easy to accommodate for people like us who based in Singapore.

So we decided to go for the traditional way. Engaged with one local bridal shop and get everything done there.

After done some researching online (reading SingaporeBrides Forum), we went to Julia Wedding News to check out the packages. Their gowns are pretty as what people describe. The sales person who end up being my coordinator for 1 year - Jess, she is very nice and we had a great chat.

We signed up on the spot to enjoy more benefits like getting more photos and a bit of discount. Well, they are pretty reputable at Tanjong Pagar area, I must admit they are good in tackling customer, you know, make you happy about your decision.  :)

I walked out the door with a smile thinking that I’ve got a pretty good deal. I know it’s pricey compare to other bridal shop, but I am happy that we are flying to Taiwan for photoshoot. I begin to imagine what’s like shooting in Taiwan, blah blah blah…

After signing up, I still follow closely the Julia Wedding News Thread. I can tell that the deal we made was pretty good compare to other brides. At least I think so. Besides comparing the package, I also able list out few places which are potentially the shooting venue. I am impressed that the JWN thread is so active. Averagely 10 post per day. I also make friends from the thread.

I asked HK to take some photos of my actual day wedding gowns and Kua.

Photoshooting - End of March 2009

I think pre-wedding photoshoot is the happiest part of the wedding.

Because I get to wear beautiful gowns, posing with my beloved hubby whom does not like to take much photograph.

Also because I spent a lot of time on dieting in order to fit myself into most of the gowns. Some of the gowns can’t be amend. I want to look at my best and I believe I did, off coz with a little help on photoshop.

Wearing wedding gowns can be really blissful. It’s easily affected the people around with all the blissfulness. :p

During photoshoot, we have poses that we always laugh at when we see people posing that way. We thought we don’t want those poses, but the photographer make us pose that way.

I love the weather during our stay at Taiwan, it was very chilling and cool. But it was a pity to see a moody sky with no clouds, no blue sky and no sun.

The weirdest thing during the whole photoshoot was the assistant taping my boobs with masking tape. Well, to create the very geng cleavage that you all WOW about. I know!

We were not nervous at all during the whole photoshoot. Not too tiring. I am glad that the shooting team was fun to be with. They are serious and fun at the same time.

I remembered we were shooting at a lake side at Yang Ming Shan. The muddy floor was very slippery and I fell down. Yes, with my beautiful while gown with long train. I knock on my knees. ‘Black Green’ as expected. Pain like hell lor!

Although the bridal package is expensive, but really happy with the outcome. HK and I look great. The album printed nicely. Most importantly is the experience and memories. To get HK doing all these with me, priceless.

I’ll post up my pre-wedding photos soon but here are the teasers I posted up before.

Registration of Marriage - August 2009

We went submitting the form on May. Chosen our ROM date to be in August. We thought 070809 is cool and easy to remember. Totally meaningless to us.

Really really happy that the date is available. Very sweet to see all the happy faces during the ROM. Extremely grateful to see all family members make the effort to attend and witness our registration.

Gor Dai Lai - Sept 2009

This is a chinese tradition thingie where both parties exchange wedding gift like that. My mom gotto prepare 3 things for her son-in-law, meaning my hubby - A belt, A long pant and a wallet. These are for him to make good fortune in his future business or something like that.

Hubby side brought 2 bottle of liquor, red cloth, seafood (海味), chicken, pig hand, bride price (聘礼) and off coz the ‘marry cake’ (50 boxes).

I order the ‘marry cake’ from my cousin. She designed a pair of cute wedding couple cupcake for me. She also help me to look for sweet pink boxes. Really thankful when someone put effort on helping you to get the best. :)

Whether the cupcake is tasty or not, hmm.. not really in the question. I am not allow to eat anyway. hahaha. But I believe it’s nothing bad la.

HK was very exciting about getting the present. All those gifts were his choice. :p We all can tell by looking at his happy face.

Bai Ga Zhong - Sept 2009

Weeks before this day, we have bought a new queen size bed, few pillows, pillow cover, bed sheet, bed frame, wardrobe and makeup table. Father-in-law also hire people to repaint the whole room to make it looks like new.

This Bai Ga Zhong day is basically my sisters help me to decorate the new room, put up the bed sheet cover, pillow cover, stick double happiness wording, put my wedding gifts on the table blah blah blah. Another Chinese Tradition.

They have special date and timing for this action one. We just follow as much as we can. :)

Wedding eve’s Buffet Dinner - Oct 2009

I leave this buffet dinner to my mom. I let her decide for me. She did a great job on this. I mean the catering she found was providing good food. Thanks to my auntie’s recommendation.

Everyone was complimenting the food. We invited more than 150 relatives to come over. It was consider quite a big party. Pool side party somemore. Haha

Fried chicken wings, Toufu Sing Kua, Fried Prawn, Sotong, Mushroom Vege.

Curry Laksa Stall

Ais Kacang and beverages stall

Curry Chicken, Sweet and sour Fish, Fried rice and Nasi Lemak!

Got Fried Kuay Teow Stall

Satay~

And my favourite, Pohpiah stall.

The whole catering buffet was amazing. So many good food. I had tasted almost everything there.

Really thankful for all the relatives who came to the buffet dinner after work. Everyone stuck in the jam for more than 1 hour. Party ended at 12am.

After the party ended, my grandma insist I should drink the ‘tong yun’. We do not have the ‘comb hair’ ceremony as most of the chinese do as HK is a christian.

Typing the whole post makes me recall back everything. It’s a long process but I learned here and there. It’s fun anyway. My life’s biggest event so far. :)

I will post up my actual day and wedding dinner as soon as I got the photos from my photographer.