Cely 完美的一天

Yokoso Japan - Hokkaido Day 2

Note: Hokkaido Day 1

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.