More videos of Hokkaido to be uploaded gradually

Hokkaido Countryside


Mount Showa


Cooking up a "Storm"


View taken from Lake Toya's hotel room


Performance at Ainu Village


"Dried Flowers Shop" in Tomita Farm

Fashion Show

Fashion show from fake Japanese man and ladies !

Last Day in Japan

It's a free and easy day ... we got to wake up late and really have rested better than the rest of the days. After a long breakfast at the hotel's restaurant, we checked out of hotel and went for one more shopping trip at Aeon Shopping mall again.

I re-visited a shop that sold really cute stuff. Managed to find 2 lovely collars for Jojo in this shop and the price is really reasonable.

We departed for Singapore at 6pm for Singapore. We reached Singapore about 12:10am.
Frankly I was beginning to miss Jojo a lot especially after watching "10 promises to my dog" on the plane back". Sobbing quietly while watching the touching show. I only managed to sleep for 2 hours before waking up at 5:30am so that we can fetch Jojo back from Josephine's house by 6:15am.

Japan has been quite an experience for me. The Japanese are a group of people who appreciate the finer side of life. They prefer better quality food and items. They dressed well and are quite pleasant & helpful to other people. Their customer service is really awesome !!! Really enjoy buying things from there and knowing that I would be greeted with a smile and a word of "arigato". It's a shiok feeling to "depart" your money happily and contributing a little bit to their weakening economy. Their public toilets are very impressive too. The citizens are very hygenic and clean and they kept the toilets really clean and pleasant. Such a pleasant encounter ! CK and myself would like to visit Japan free & easy next time if we can.

6th day in Japan - Tokyo

We took a domestic flight back to Tokyo. Tokyo is a busy city with many highways that simply just built over many streets. It was amazing how the engineers can do this in such a crowded city. Some of the buildings were a few inches from the highway road. To me, Tokyo wasn't a very beautiful city. The buildings were dull and the city landscape was not as pretty as ours. No wonder we are called the "Garden City". I began to appreciate Singapore in terms of the Government's continuous efforts to beautify our city. Nonetheless, Tokyo is still quite an interesting city to explore.































Today we visited:

1. Asakusa Kannon Temple
1a. Nakamise Shopping Street
2. Shinjuku
3. Ginza

1. Asakusa Kannon Temple / Nakamise Shopping Street

This is quite a popular temple which tourists would visit when they visited Tokyo. We had a good lunch nearby and proceeded to visit this temple which has a history of more than 1300 years.

Before reaching the temple, we have to go through the Nakamise Shopping street. This street is famous for their rice crackers and I did not know why we did not even bought one packet back ??

Upon reaching the Temple, Tan Shan (Tokyo Tour Guide) told us several observations before entering the temple.

First of all, there is a clean pool and we were supposed to use the metal scope provide to scope water to wash our hands. Afterwhich, we should use the metal scope to scope water to wash our mouth. These 2 procedures is to ensure that we were "cleansed" before entering a sacred place.

Secondly, you can enter the temple. You can have the choice to "draw" lots to see if you are having good or bad luck. CK wanted to try out and got a good luck lots. For people who drew a bad luck lot, they can tied the charm onto the poles provided. If you got a good luck lot, then you can bring it back.

















































































































































































2. Shinjuku
Next we went to a red-light district called Shinjuku. It was a rather complex place crowded with many youngsters and neon lights board. After walking around for sometime, we got tired and just settled down at Starbucks for a cuppa.







































3. Ginza
The next stop is at Ginza which have rows of shops that sells branded stuff. The tour guide told us that the Burberry Blue Label was the only thing that were worth buying as other branded stuff were more expensive than in Singapore. Before coming to Japan, have heard from friends about Burberry, therefore could not resists but bought 2. My mother also bought 1 for her own. In total, we bought 6 but 3 were bought on behalf of friends. Hubby, thanks for one of the Burberry bags.

After leaving Ginza, we simply went back hotel to re-packed everything as tomorrow we would be departing Narita.

5th Day at Hokkaido

Time flies, today was our 5th day In Japan. We stayed at Sapporo (main city in Hokkaido) for 2 nights. Afterwhich, we headed for Otaru, a rather romantic place .... with a rather beautiful canal, a charming Musical box Museum ... and many other shops.

1. Sapporo - Indori park
2. Otaru
3. Asahi Beer Factory
4. Rera Chitose Outlet Mall

1. Sapporo - Indori park
In winter, the Japanese would hold the annual "snow craving" (not ice-carving)in Indori Park.

















































































2. Otaru

Otaru is situated in the western part of Hokkaido, facing Ishikari Bay. It has developed and prospered as "the sea entrance of Hokkaido" over the last 100 years and it has gained the nickname "Wall Street of the North." The glassworks shops, coffee shops, restaurants and shopping malls along the canal have been converted from stone-built or brick-built warehouses, which were used for storage in the days when commerce flourished and the canal was crowded with jostling barges. When night falls, oil lamps on the cobbled streets are lit, and the town evokes a gentle, nostalgic mood. (quoted from JNTO website)

You can visit the Music Box Museum and Glass factories near the canal. We stayed for about 20 minutes at Otaru Canal for some photoes shoots. Then we proceeded to a street lined with shops leading us to the famous Music Box Museum. You could hear a faint musical piece on the street as you approached the museum, it was quite magical. You were allowed to touch all items on the first storey as they were not as expensive. There were many types of musical boxes in all shapes and sizes to meet your needs. I really regretted not getting one of them ... anyone going Hokkaido, can you please buy for me ? It was a rather country looking music piece with a boy and girl sitting on a see-saw. (See the photo and video)




Otaru - Canal. That day the heat was soaring to the highest at 36 degree celsius but dropped to a cool 26 degree celsius around 4pm.



The musical box which I did not buy .... sob sob ... regret regret ... why ? why?


Overview of music box museum from 2nd storey

We also went to eat the 5-coloured flavoured ice-cream after walking around the museum and other shops.




2 "Superstars" eating ice-cream under the sun ... hahaha

3. Asahi Beer Factory

All materials including cans, bottles and even the ladies' uniform are 100% recycled. Amazing .... after the tour around the factory, we sampled some drinks products and even biscuits produced by Asahi. They have diversified their businesses to many areas.

























































4. Rera Chitose Outlet Mall
This looks very much like the Factory outlet in US. There were may famous and much sought after brands in this place. We just browsed around and CK bought a pair of Levis jeans for a good offer at S$70.00.
































Dinner - Fried tempera
We enjoyed frying our very tempura ... shiok ! Ingredients are very fresh .... yummy !!!