(no subject)
May be a bit late to do a post on the Hokkaido trip I came back from more than a week ago, but here goes anyway.
September 9th....the day of final release from two years of futility, the day I shed the bonds of National Slavery. One hell of a hectic day that started with stomach trouble in the morning and segued neatly into running around everywhere to get paperwork done. Even after I had officially ORDed it still wasn't over yet. I only got a break after parking my ass on the plane the night of the very same day. At this point I make the dubious decision of watching the Avatar movie (not the Big Blue Movie) instead of sleeping. Show's OK, would be waaay better if they had less pompous speechifying and more real dialogue. After snatching a few hours of sleep on the plane me and my dad suddenly find we have a scant few hours to rush from Narita to Haneda Airport to catch the transfer flight to Hokkaido. The 2 hour(!!!!) bus trip provides another opportunity to catch sleep, and the one hour plane trip yet another. Only at something like 3pm do we manage to catch some lunch. Walked into a random place near the bayside market and had a bowl o' 海栗イクラ丼 for what must be the first time in my life. I never knew that sea urchin tasted like egg, for one thing. As night draws close we wander around on foot from the hotel to the Mt Hakodate Ropeway, then to the Motomachi district. Somehow we go one full circle and end up at the Kirin Beer Garden, which turned out to be our dinner stop. Here I get to ogle at the girls in Bavarian barmaid costumes(halfway to French maids hehehe), and for the first time I get to eat Genghis Khan, this BBQ mutton thing that's a specialty of Hokkaido. Whilst it's not bad, what really sticks in my memory is the AWESOME sausage in pie crust. Sorry no pics....too hungry to wait kekeke.
After finding out that my dad transforms into a wild boar at night, we head out to Hakodate's Asa-Ichi morning market for breakfast:
Though some exploration brings us through here:
And finally we end up with having breakfast here. There were quite a few of these tucked around, and as you can see I'm not a morning person:
After which we head back to the Motomachi district. What was closed and dead last night is now very much alive:
That would be the final sight of Hakodate we would see before cramming our bags into the rented car and embarking on an approx 7 hour trip to Niseko. Of course that's certainly not without a few pit stops. The first one is not that far from Hakodate:
That's mum and dad over there. And on the next stop my mum says HALT! GELATOZEIT. And it was indeed good stuff:
With such distances to cover this is of course inevitable:
The gas station was very near our destination. 'Pumping station' would be more accurate though, it was little more than what was in a photo plus a cashier's booth and a fuel tanker.
Hirafu Village in Niseko is a quaint little place indeed, and our lodgings were no different:
We would be staying here for 3 days, the longest time we would stay in any one place for the whole trip. Our first dinner was the most boring ever: INSTANT RAMEN. And some meat and veg from the supermarket we had hit before. Over the next few days we would sortie out all over the place, like to Niseko Village:
No, that's not a randomly placed pumpkin, they're EVERYWHERE!
More to come!
September 9th....the day of final release from two years of futility, the day I shed the bonds of National Slavery. One hell of a hectic day that started with stomach trouble in the morning and segued neatly into running around everywhere to get paperwork done. Even after I had officially ORDed it still wasn't over yet. I only got a break after parking my ass on the plane the night of the very same day. At this point I make the dubious decision of watching the Avatar movie (not the Big Blue Movie) instead of sleeping. Show's OK, would be waaay better if they had less pompous speechifying and more real dialogue. After snatching a few hours of sleep on the plane me and my dad suddenly find we have a scant few hours to rush from Narita to Haneda Airport to catch the transfer flight to Hokkaido. The 2 hour(!!!!) bus trip provides another opportunity to catch sleep, and the one hour plane trip yet another. Only at something like 3pm do we manage to catch some lunch. Walked into a random place near the bayside market and had a bowl o' 海栗イクラ丼 for what must be the first time in my life. I never knew that sea urchin tasted like egg, for one thing. As night draws close we wander around on foot from the hotel to the Mt Hakodate Ropeway, then to the Motomachi district. Somehow we go one full circle and end up at the Kirin Beer Garden, which turned out to be our dinner stop. Here I get to ogle at the girls in Bavarian barmaid costumes(halfway to French maids hehehe), and for the first time I get to eat Genghis Khan, this BBQ mutton thing that's a specialty of Hokkaido. Whilst it's not bad, what really sticks in my memory is the AWESOME sausage in pie crust. Sorry no pics....too hungry to wait kekeke.
After finding out that my dad transforms into a wild boar at night, we head out to Hakodate's Asa-Ichi morning market for breakfast:
Though some exploration brings us through here:
And finally we end up with having breakfast here. There were quite a few of these tucked around, and as you can see I'm not a morning person:
After which we head back to the Motomachi district. What was closed and dead last night is now very much alive:
That would be the final sight of Hakodate we would see before cramming our bags into the rented car and embarking on an approx 7 hour trip to Niseko. Of course that's certainly not without a few pit stops. The first one is not that far from Hakodate:
That's mum and dad over there. And on the next stop my mum says HALT! GELATOZEIT. And it was indeed good stuff:
With such distances to cover this is of course inevitable:
The gas station was very near our destination. 'Pumping station' would be more accurate though, it was little more than what was in a photo plus a cashier's booth and a fuel tanker.
Hirafu Village in Niseko is a quaint little place indeed, and our lodgings were no different:
We would be staying here for 3 days, the longest time we would stay in any one place for the whole trip. Our first dinner was the most boring ever: INSTANT RAMEN. And some meat and veg from the supermarket we had hit before. Over the next few days we would sortie out all over the place, like to Niseko Village:
No, that's not a randomly placed pumpkin, they're EVERYWHERE!
More to come!