Japan 2019 – Part 4
Yay, Tokyo! Wow, what a culture shock. Did I say that last time I went from Kyoto to Tokyo? I feel like this isn't the first time I've actually felt that Tokyo is jarringly different from the rest of Japan.
That being said, the first thing we ate - Ichiran Ramen - was way tastier than the last time I had it! Man this stuff is seriously good. I think it was here that we were waiting for a while just outside the door, so I was trying my hardest to read the writing on a paper stuck next to the lift. I think my brother had to explain that it said "elevator is over here". But now I know!
Look Enma is here too!! We headed to Kita-Kamakura, which was a place with lots of shrines.
There are heaps of dessert shops here too! And this one right next to the station was pretty yum! Matcha kanten, and anmitsu. I totally can't get enough anmitsu XD
What's a holiday without taking photos of people taking photos of things XD
After the lovely stroll through the shrines, it was time to head to the shopping district in Kamakura, called little town road!
An unagi tamagoyaki!!
It's a fun little place with soooo much food. I even went for some kakigori, but it wasn't quite the style I was after. I keep having to look for kakigori made the same way as I found in New York!!
THIS IS YOKOHAMA, JAPAN!
We headed out to Chinatown after that, just to check out the place. It's so quiet here XD
We went to a Chinese restaurant that my brother'd been to before which was decent. It was really out of the way, but it had some good stuff! Clean and light, unlike the heavy greasy stuff you get elsewhere. I quite enjoyed it and our waiter was Taiwanese so even my parents got to converse!
And yes, that's a shark fin soup. We ordered one to share between everyone just to try it. I'm fairly sure I've actually had some as a kid, but it was interesting to have again. Too bad it would probably be a waste to have asked "how was the shark fin sourced?" since I'm pretty sure they don't really care about animal ethics here....
Some brown sugar bubble tea!!! More bitter/caramelised than one I had in Perth when I got back, but also prettier! The actual pearl's weren't quite as chewy was I wanted them to be though.
Next morning, I ventured out by myself for a pre-crush-hour cafe visit. This is Toranomon Koffee, which my brother recommended I check out since it was close to where we were staying. Wow, it's a double set up! So cool!
A yum filter while I finally got a chance to read a book that my brother lent to me (which is on loan from one of his friends). A really interesting read about a Japanese coffee shop. I really like it as it describes how the owner set up a cafe, the customers, and how the cafe evolves. It does seem to take on a morbid tone towards the end though. Not super morbid, just the reality that everything dies XD An enjoyable read!
Butter toast!
And a fresh kashi!! Woot!!
Haha, there is a Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Tokyo! I'd used up all my excitement in the New York flagship store, so I was less interested in this one, but it was still interesting to compare the two. The concept and layout styles are the same, but the decor is completely different!
Many cups on wall!!
Uh, this place still uses Steampunks even though Alpha Dominche isn't a thing anymore?
The hanging sakura are so pretty!
A coffee mocktail thing from the bar :D Not too bad actually.
A grilled beef place!! Man the marbling on this stuff was so good. And that warabi mochi!! A bit more on this place. It's tiny but has a wait, and the kitchen, while reminding me of Tonki Tonkatsu from my previous trip, didn't have everything on show. The food here was way better though!
It was time to farewell my parents, who were flying back to Sydney. This is a beef hotpot in the airport. That's some crazy marbled beef, and an interesting set of condiments! Yay konnyaku! The beef was so rich and expensive!
I'd booked a capsule hotel for 25AUD a night for my remaining stay, jackpot! This was in Asakusa, a place I've enjoyed from previous trips, and better yet, there's a Fuglen! Finally got to one on my third trip here! Lovely filter coffee as always, and a Norwegian pancake!
Street photography from the get go!
I explored around Hiroo, which was meant to be a new hipster hangout. Some really good English speakers here, from what I overheard. There was a cute little anmitsu and other dessert shop that I stumbled upon, and I kind of regret not getting kuzumochi! I'd asked about it but the shopkeeper didn't speak that much english, so I went straight for the anmitsu instead haha.
Then I walked through a heaps dodgy place in Shinjuku to get to an udon restaurant my brother suggested that I go to XD
Hahaha more warabi mochi! Yay. I am such a mochi addict! And the noodles were amazing too! I got the bokkake udon, which had beef "tendon" which I think actually turned out to be closer to brisket. Still delicious though, and served in a massive bowl!
Then I went back to my hotel to eat the anmitsu I bought earlier. Gosh I love this stuff so much!
Ugh why are my trips so epic. After all that, I still had to hotfoot it to Glitch, because I love them so much. I am always impressed with just how tasty their coffee is - like mindblowingly tasty, so much so that I even bought this cardboard coaster for 200 yen!
Yep, their coffee doesn't disappoint. That's a nice Cup of Excellence! And I love El Salvadors too. I deliberately avoided the geishas this time around maybe? I don't remember. But I could totally come back here every time!
And that night. Oh yeah. While I was at Starbucks the day before, I felt in the right mood to try booking a restaurant. But trying to call through to Den is a real feat in denying the impossible, and my skill level isn't up there yet. After... 64 attempts to call through I gave up. Weak, I know, considering it took me over 80 attempts to get to Minamishima. I blame it on sudden impusle; I doubt they would have had a table for the next day anyway hahahah. So instead, I went to Inua's website and made an easy booking. I had huge reservations about Inua (pun intended) because the cost here is soooo much insanely more than a Japanese restaurant. But I was feeling good, so yeah. Inua XD
I also didn't get a good picture but after dinner, we went to a cafe/bar that my brother had been to before. It's run by a former Glitch staff? Or some affiliation with Glitch. It was dark, moody and tres cool. A small quiet space where they served alcoholic and/or caffeinated drinks (or both!). They seemed really into photography and were sooooo smooth. They recommended some books off their shelf when they saw us reading a few, and omg. The way the waiter poured the water. Was so bar-tender. My goodness! I've never been in awe of someone pouring tap water until now!!! What!!! Bartender skills are amazing. He put the glass over the bottle, and then tipped the whole thing upside down with one hand to let the bottle fill the glass perfectly. Like woah. I gotta see that again!!!
I had a half day left, and again my trusty Fuglen comes to the morning rescue with a lovely cup of coffee - I figured out how to get a single cup instead of the decanter from last time XD I just had to order the batch! And plain waffle today.
I met up with my brother at Koffee Mameya, which the barista explained was "coffee bean shop". This is the same guy who set up Omotesando Koffee and Toranamon Koffee! This entrance is so charming.
This tiny little dark cube space is amazing. Not just architecturally either. Look at the beans on display. Yeah. You're seeing that right. They serve everything from super light Scandanavian roasts to that pitch black oily stuff. Woah! And they are so passionate and confident in talking about each different type of bean!
I love this kind of concept store. They sell all these beans as packs, and can brew them for you too! I love this because it shows these guys are passionate about coffee and also about people who drink coffee. No snobs here, they embrace everything! And that was really eye opening for me. Love this place!
I think I chose a geisha here? By Cupping Room. Not the most aromatic/mindblowing geisha, especially since I've had Glitch Coffee the day before. but still nice!
We made a quick detour to Henry's Burger, a place that my brother previously enjoyed. But today it wasn't that good, with heaps of chewy bits. Oh well. That's ok, since this was just a snack.
My brother wanted to eat at 6th by Oriental. I didn't realise this was a European style restaurant, complete with al fresco dining. I wasn't sure what to expect, but wow, the food was actually really good! This was a... kingfish? snapper? Some sort of white fish carpaccio that was tasty!
Snails on the menu, so yes please!
This pork chop was AMAZING. Really lovely, perfectly cooked and good flavour.
And a cute little dessert, perfectly sized and priced!
It's actually a lovely place and we were both very happy with the food. It's also such a different vibe from Japanese restaurants. This one really did have a feeling of being "Western" by virtue of the fact that there was noise. Haha yeah. People were having conversations everywhere instead of it being super quiet, much like how I'm used to hearing ambient noise back home. So good, especially since my brother hasn't had this experience in quite a while!
Definitely a place to put on the list!
And with that perfect timing, it was time for me to head to the airport. My time in Japan was up. But not before I took a picture of this guy in the middle of an intersection taking a photo of something! Haha, it reminded me so much of me! I don't even know what he was snapping!
I was on the wrong side of the plane. Those people looking over, are taking photos of Mt Fuji! The pilot had announced that today's flight path and clear skies would mean that we got to see the mountain! Alas, I didn't get to peer over.
And wow, I'm in luck! The Sakura special dinner was still available! Not advertised as a super special Sakura, but it was the same thing!! Little appetisers, sakura soba, and chicken with rice. This was really tasty! Man I love flying Singapore Airlines.
And that's that for this trip to Japan. I definitely love coming back here and want to come back again!! To Hakodate especially! It was kind of life changing for me. I need to go visit all the shrines for Hijikata too on the next trip! Well maybe not all, just as many as I can!!! And I want to participate in the squid festival!! And I want more wagashi and warabi mochi and anmitsu!!!
Japan 2019 - Part 3
Yay, Hakodate, my brother's favourite town! Little did I know, but this was going to become my favourite town too, but for different reasons. First stop once we were off the super hokuto, was Lucky Pierrot.
Wow the interior of these places is like nothing I'd ever expected! And to think, these guys love Chinese fried chicken XD Since this was our first time, my brother ordered Set A for us since that was a good intro to the food here.
This was some iced tea. No sugar at all, which is interesting because I'm used to receiving cold sugary drinks at diners. But this is Japan, so it's a plain iced tea!
A mug o' chips!! Yeah!! Tasty chips with.. cheese sauce?
And this burger. Yeah that's some nice fried chicken! Loads of flavour! This was such a good feed even though I'd eaten plenty on the train! Definitely a great spot to eat at and all the different shops have different decor!
The streets around where we were staying were fairly quiet, as we weren't quite in the touristy area. Then, we caught the tram (they have trams here!!) to a place called Goryokaku. Little did I know that this was going to be the most amazing place ever.
Goryokaku is a fortress, and surrounded by water. What an interesting shape.
And here's a plaque of someone? I don't know who that is though. But there was a giant tour group of Chinese people and they were being explained who this was, and then all the tourists started touching the face. Omg why were they touching the face, who was this person ;_;
Oh. OH. When my brother said I'd get to see a place where Hijikata was mentioned, I didn't realised just how famous he is around here...
So many statues of him!! Wow!! I mean, I knew he was a real person after getting obsessed with PeaceMaker Kurogane, but I didn't realise just how prominent of a figure he was! Everyone loves Hijikata here! Goryokaku was his fortress (well, not "his" lol). There's so much history here!
There are even cartoon versions of him. And he's the official guide for Hakodate! Wow!!
You cannot believe how excited I was at all this. This trip was great, and Abashiri prison was pretty inspiring, and Noboribetsu was a really different experience, but Goryokaku. I don't have words for this. There was something about seeing the "real" Hijikata that was actually, quite literally life changing. He's not even my favourite "character"! That still belongs to Okita Souji, PMK version. But omg. I need to come back here to fully explore this fort, twice over ;_;
This place is truly amazing. I absolutely have to come back and explore ALL OF IT.
I also found a sakura anmitsu that I totally had to have. The jelly was not the standard dense agar agar texture, and I liked this better! Plus they had the tri-colour dango, which actually reminded me a lot of the one that Okita was eating in one of the episodes of PMK. I'm so obsessed!
Ok. That night everyone really wanted crab, so we went to a restaurant that had several live crab tanks. My brother found it amusing that someone had left a very poor review somewhere about this place, but I got a good vibe from it, so we went in. We opted for a snow crab and a king crab, and my dad went and chose the (un)lucky crustacea that would become our dinner!
We had half sashimi and half boiled for each one. Look at the way the flesh is structured, it almost looks like grapes off a vine! I dunno that's just the way I saw it. Both species of crab were super delicious, but the snow crab is sweeter!
Oh, here are my camera pics.
After a very satisfying dinner, some night photography!
And a yubari melon! Yeah! I've wanted one for a long time. It wasn't quite the right season for it though and it wasn't quite ripe, but it was so fragrant! Yubari melons are quite next level compared to the standard Hokkaido melon. It's worth forking out the premium for these ones!
The next morning, it was off to the Hakodate morning markets!
This stall was a place where you can fish your own live squid out of a kiddy pool, and then it gets prepared right in front of you!
Yeah our squid time!!! I took a video of this but our squid kind of just flopped over instead of doing a proper dance hahaha. Plus, I'm not actually the biggest fan of raw squid, but this was worth getting once to see how it all works!
This was the real good stuff, a super tasty seafood bowl! Yeah! I'm totally getting this again the next time I come back!
Also, gorging on yubari melons :D
Hakodate love their squid!! I want to come back for their squid festival and learn the ika odori!
Now it was time to catch the super hokuto, with a Snaffles in hand!
Hello Onuma quasi-national park!
It started to rain as we searched for lunch. There was a cutesey little hot dog shop, but they also sold soba. Not just any soba either. There was a mountain vegetable soba, but what I noticed was the junsai soba. YES JUNSAI SOBA. Omg. I love junsai. So I ordered this for the gooey water plant goodness! I love junsai!
A Goryokaku manhole cover, cool!
Back to the main part of Hakodate. Hahaha a love themed Lucky Pierrot!
I got myself a Snaffle's strawberry shortcake! Yeah!
Haha you can even get a Shinsengumi outfit photo here! Man I'd love to get the entire outfit. The haori itself was something I contemplated getting, but I felt I was unworthy at the time and wouldn't even wear it. So much samurai stuff here, it was amazing!
For the afternoon and evening, it was a trip up to Mount Hakodate.
Look at those clouds. I actually really enjoyed seeing the clouds from up here, because the sunrays were amazing!
Haha look a Shinsengumi collectible dispensing machine! Oh man I really wanted to get the haori and the flag ones, and maybe the Hijikata ones. It took a while for me to understand that this required 2x 100 yen coins; I couldn't figure out why 1 wasn't making it turn lol. And my first one was the green one!! I don't even know who that was ;_; So I rolled again, and got my flag version, yay! I'm getting so many Shinsengumi souvenirs here hahah.
Hakodate at night!
One the sun had set, we headed back down as quickly as possible - the cable car was shutting down early because there was going to be a lightning storm at night! We headed over to a beer house, which had a really delicious house beer!
Some wagyu nigiri!
I also had to get pickles because I love pickles. There's even pickled burdock! Yeah!
Steak, which was quite tasty!
If I remember, this was the "Genghis Khan". Glad we got to try this! This place had really nice food! And that was it for that night.
Our final day in Hakodate, and the family stayed in for a bit, so I took a walk to the nearby shrine, and then over to the morning markets to see if I could find that sushi shop I spotted the other day.
Huzzah! I managed to find the sushi place and I placed my order in Japanese! Well, everything except for surf clam. I am really bad at knowing the mollusc names in Japanese, though my fish ordering abilities are adequate for common things I want to eat. I got my tamago, my akami maguro, otoro, surf clam, hotate, botan ebi, and uni! Woohoo!
A live squid transport!
This was a really cool alleyway. I'd love to explore it since it seems like there might be shops in here!
A pit stop at Lucky Pierrot where my brother stocked up on heaps of goods here to take back to Tokyo, while I tried out the soft serve.
My mum saw these massive squid cookie things (I have no idea what to call them... battered flattened squid???) and wanted one, so I ordered one for her. It's "fun" to hear the screaming squid as they get flatted in the squisher box thing XD. It's pretty tasty too!
My lovely gold foil bento for the shinkansen back to Tokyo. I love the bentos here!
And a taste of sea pineapple. It's not very yummy XD. My brother spotted this on the food carts that are on this train! I guess that's one more animal to add to my list of things eaten :D Not that I have a list lol.
Goodbye Hakodate, goodbye Hokkaido. You were actually more amazing than I imagined. I'll have to come back for Goryokaku for sure, and the quasi national park, and maybe even Noboribetsu! Hijikata-san you are amazing!!!
Japan 2019 – Part 2
Hello Sapporo!! The first night we simply explored around a little bit and ate at another random izakaya. It was cool walking through the massive park and seeing the clocktower. The Panasonic tower looked pretty cool too, but we didn't go up.
It was actually hilarious because my brother likes checking that we've been paying attention to where we're going by asking my parents and I to find the way back. I'm terrible with directions anyway, being heavily reliant on Google to tell me where to go. For once, my landmarks weren't food places. On the way back, I recognised the street full of bridal shops and that's how I knew we were going the right way XD
A specialty milk specialty coffee shop! Forget single origins, here you can choose different types of milk for your coffee!
My brother tried the unhomogenised jersey milk from Biei, and my mum chose holstein milk from Hakodate. Those drinks ended up being more chocolate-heavy rather than creamy or letting acidity through, which was interesting, because I would have expected the jersey milk to perform quite well and make for a super sweet and creamy drink.
My flat white made with guernsey milk from Takinoe. It ended up tasting the sweetest and creamiest of the three which was surprising.
Otaru!! We spent half a day here and it's a really nice place!
Taking a pic of my brother taking a pic of ice cream!
Warabi mochi!! Man I love this stuff so much!
This set of clouds was really interesting, reminded me of angel wings!
I love all the running people carts!
What a cute little seagull! I kind of wish I could have been in two places at once lol. I was too busy taking a kazilion photos of this fellow, so i wasn't able to then back away and take photos of the crowd taking photos of the seagull XD Oh well!
I need to get myself a yukata one day...
There's an abandoned railway here too with plenty of things to take pictures of!
Ah, a better shot of the angel wings clouds!
The sky is so nice! We stayed here till sunset to take photos of the river, but none of my photos were actually that good XD
Haha the Lawson's here had clear mochi! So I had to go buy some. Also, there's something here called "Mo-cheese" or similar that was also really tasty! It was cheese flavoured mochi, and it was amazing! This was for the train ride away from Sapporo.
Wow, Noboribetsu! My brother gave us a heads up that it was a little sulfur-smelling here, but during our stay, it was quite mild. But I think I've now got the smell ingrained into my brain and when I boil eggs all I can think about are the sulfur pits of Noboribetsu ;_;
I absolutely love that this is a demon town. So many demons everywhere!!!
We went to one of the small shops that looked like they do BBQs. All the seafood! Molluscs and shellfish are the best! Though the sea snails on a stick were not as tasty as I imagined they might be XD
Tea and sweets at our hotel!
To the bear park!! These bears were actually super lively and wave at people for food :D
They also hate the crows.
And a duck race too! The ducks didn't look too impressed though haha
Those are the males, in a separate enclosure. And that little spot with people in it, is a place where you can feed the bears!
And the reason the bears don't like the crows: they steal food! But the actual biscuits are too big for the crows to eat, so there was a funny moment where the bears were chasing a crow around while the crow kept dunking the biscuit in a puddle of water till it softened enough for it to eat XD
Hell Valley, a super cool place! There's a lot of walking trails here to go through and some of them are quite tricky to navigate. One path even has a quiz about the area, which was fun to do since it also had English on it.
There's also a spring in town that actually starts bubbling like crazy for a while every few hours. My brother's right, it sounds like a washing machine! Pretty cool to watch!
Dinner at the hotel was pretty amazing. It was funny because as I saw all the food, I said, "it feels like a kaiseki!" and my brother responded with, "that's because it is a kaiseki!" lol. This place had really nice food! I really enjoyed eating here!
Sakura tofu!
Sashimi
Broad bean paste stuff, with a super cute demon club shaped carrot XD
Hotpot!
We even got a whole fish, and some tempura fish. There's so much food!
Snow crab and a delicate vinegar sauce
A strawberry dessert.
There's a massive golden demon club here that has regular "performances" where the demons pop out and do a little dance. I can't imagine enjoying this more than a couple of times though!
I do love this place, it's a super nice hotel and the onsen here was huge too! There were all these different pools with different minerals and properties, and an outdoors area too. But the best bit was that this place had a dry sauna. Woah it was hot! But really enjoyable to be in there (in a help I'm a melting sweaty mess kind of way) and I liked alternating between that and the pools. There was also a section that had heavy "chunks" of water that fell down, so it was a massage for the shoulders and neck! While Noboribetsu is quite small, I wouldn't mind coming back here again!
Oh yeah, I'm totally a local and doing the stamp collecting thing!
Bye bye Noboribetsu! Onwards to Hakodate, my brother's favourite town..
Japan 2019 - Part 1
Oh man too many holidays at once. This Japan trip was actually a family holiday, where my mum wanted to visit a heap of different places. The trip was mainly based in Hokkaido, and I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy the trip or not since it wasn't a food based trip, and I've never done a not-food-based-trip before. It turns out I loved it! It's rare for my to have a life changing holiday, but this one was pretty incredible. Because I'm still sick of typing many words, this will just be mainly picture spam because I took a LOT of photos!
We started off in Tokyo, and here's a coffee my brother fetched for me. It's notable because it's a warm can, and apparently it's a single origin - Ethiopia Mokka. It didn't taste terrible, just bland XD
I also traded my brother some more of my St Ali instant coffee for this Supreme Coffee instant coffee. I haven't tried it yet though!
A trip to Life Size Cribe, and I had no idea that red beans and butter on toast was a thing XD My brother ordered this and it was pretty tasty! Maybe I'll have to try making my own at some point!
Coffee with Mugi!!!
Lunch at Shake Shack. Yeah I know, I've just come from America. But it's still tasty!
Haneda Airport, domestic terminal. Look they have a wasabi plant on display! And I finally got my hands on some saba sushi. This was my plane snack, and it's just as I imagined! Good strong vinegar flavour to offset the really yummy fatty-fishiness!
The AirDo plane's bear totally looks like a koala. Hello Kushiro!
Most of this trip simply involved eating at places that looked decent. This was a cute little place!
Oden and whale meat! Yay now I can say I've eaten a sentient creature >_>
So many pictures at a fish market in Kushiro. This ended up being my pick your own seafood bowl. Plus the sad looking crab on the side. All of this cost about 3200 yen. The crab was a bit disappointing because it was still partly frozen. The seafood bowl, on the other hand, was quite nice! I love getting fresh seafood here! I also ate some asparagus and pumpkin. Pumpkin here is totally different from the main types of pumpkin back in Aus! These ones are dense and creamy, like the texture of chestnuts! I had a hard time liking them because they were heavier than I expected, but still tasted good!
We had a hire car for the beginning of the trip, so we went and visited the national park and wetlands.
Yay I got to do some trainspotting by following my brother around! It's actually a fun thing to do!
It's hard to take photos when we're driving twice as fast as the locals. But cows!! Cows everywhere!
There was a cutesy little shop called Poppotei that makes pretty ramen! Pork and seasonal vegetables. I love the colour in this and it tasted good too!
Lake Mashu is super pretty!
You can smell this place before you get here. Sulfur mountains!! This one was quite stinky!
No idea if people are randomly balancing rocks or some other sorcery is at work here...
Our hotel was at Lake Akan. A beautiful place, but watch out for the insane massive nasty mosquitoes that are everywhere!!!
Marimo island! This is where the marimo museum is! I remember hearing about marimos at work in Adelaide cause a friend was talking about it. Now I finally understand what they are!
The museum was small, but it had so many adorable little marimos! It even showed the life cycle of marimo.
There were touchable marimos at our hotel! They are a lot firmer than I thought, and not as fluffy. It's like a short haired rock... kind of XD
On the road again, this time a stopover at Rausu. Look at this massive octopus tentacle! Also that shot has saturated the shadows on my hand :/
Another 3000 yen seafood bowl!!
Found some nesting seagulls on the rooftop opposite where we had lunch!
A waterfall that felt like it was in the middle of nowhere. Tried a few different shutter speeds for this, but I think I still favour fast shutters.
An abandonment that my brother wanted to explore.
Waited around for a train that didn't come because "high temperatures" caused the JR lines to cancel. Instead, found some interesting bugs!
Sunset at Abashiri. My sensor is so dirty!
Set dinner at our hotel. I love the presentation! Grill your own beef, make your own noodle soup, some sashimi, crab, and an all you can eat section too!
Abashiri prison museum. I actually didn't think much of this place when we got here, but wow. The more I walked through and read the information, I ended up really liking this place! It felt like so much more than just a prison. There was a farming section here, including stories about making pickles and cutting edge farming technology. The conditions were harsh, but the prisoners loved it here. It was interesting seeing the prison cells as well, ranging from the 3 to a cell to solitary confinement, and how different materials were used for cells, for different reasons. I didn't take any pictures of this place, but I would love to visit again!
The drive to our next destination was super long, so we had a stopover at a random little stopover place. A simple, onion soup tasting ramen with the weirdest looking "fish stick" thing I've ever seen. At first I thought there was a chunk of bread in my ramen, but it's actually a spongey thing meant to resemble fish stick!
I love seeing rice fields.
Blue Lake. The water is actually super blue, it's a greeny blue and very different from the colour of the sky. This place is famous for these dead looking trees in the water? Not sure what it's all about, but it's pretty!
Look! A bumblebee! I can't believe how big they are! They are sooooo adorable!
Finally a big-ish city, Asahikawa. I call it beer river, just cause XD. Time to try some street photography!
The station here has an interesting sculpture.
My brother alerted me to the presence of sakura mochi ice cream!!! Wooohooo!
A lot of the hotels we were staying at had dinner and/or breakfast included. It turns out I love burdock here! And there's so much jelly. I love jelly! And almond tofu. There's heaps of that too! And the little shishamo fish are everywhere - I had no idea they were all bursting with roe. I made sure to eat plenty since it's hard to get back in Aus!
On the road again, so more rice fields. I'd love to visit these farms and do some rice planting one day - my brother says there are rice planting festivals that people can participate in!
This is the Ken and Mary tree. I actually have no idea who Ken and Mary are, but I think it's cool to have a tree as a tourist attraction. This was quite adorable!
Then we headed to a flower farm. Unfortunately it wasn't quite the right season to see them all in full bloom, but the place was still very picturesque, plus there were heaps of yubari melon goods here!
Yubari melon flavour "the moist stick" financier XD
Rice fields! Everywhere!
Another round of trainspotting. I actually had no idea what my brother was preparing for, so I put on my long lens since the railway track was all the way over there. Good thing, I managed to get a nice shot of the 1 car train!
Tomita farm! Full of flowers, and there's a melon farm next door, but that was closed. It was fun exploring this place!
Someone even brought in their pet parrot to take selfies with XD
They sell lavender coffee here too. Not really sure it had that much lavender flavour, but it was made to order and nice to sip on and relax at the farm.
Also got a half-half of melon and lavender flavoured soft serve since that seems to be a specialty around here.
After leaving Tomita farm, we headed to a place my brother wanted to go to. Furano ramen, a tiny tiny shop in the middle of a tiny town that served cheese ramen. Apparently lots of people leave messages about the fantastic ramen here, which was awesome! This ramen was a tad spicy, but really nice! The toilet here is apparently also super old fashioned, but I didn't feel like checking it out hahahaha. Definitely worth stopping by!
It was actually funny, even though I'm usually the one who gets asked, "how did you find out about this place?" this was the first time that I felt compelled to ask my brother how he found out about the place. It was kind of mystifying, even though I was pretty sure his answer is the same as the way I usually find out about my places. It was still weird being on the asking side instead of the answering side though!
Look! A fox!!! This was actually the third fox we saw, but the only one I managed to take a picture of. They seem used to being around cars and don't panic when we pass them. Interesting!
Can you believe that these are ski fields in winter? Amazing.
I'll end this post here, since now we're in Sapporo. What is this bee doing? Well, I found this corpse at Tomita farm, and managed to have a plastic bag handy to keep it in. Why would I want a corpse? To pose it and take photos of course! However, keeping a dead bumblebee safe was an arduous task. I wanted to make a haiku about carrying the spirit of a bumblebee all across Japan, so that it could experience things that most bumblebees couldn't. Except I never really got a chance to show it off. But it did travel all the way from Tomita farm to Hokodate! What an effort!