pitched verbal comm

Only In Hokkaido

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

So I'm back from my one-week trip in Hokkaido, Japan with my family. What can I say...There's always something different from the other every holiday trips I've had. Okay so let me summarise this as short as possible..

Day 1
Okay let's see...We took a 2-hour flight from Singapore to Bangkok, and then a 4-hour trip to Japan..Yes we took a transit flight, and it sucked because I got jet lagged twice. To make matters worse, we took another hour flight to Hokkaido. So I got pretty much shagged by it. I slept on the plane and it felt good, except for the ear pressure part. We visited the toilet while on the way to our hotel. My sister and I played snow while waiting. We reached the hotel and I slept on the bed immediately without taking a bath. Of course I took one later in the morning

Day 2
We visited some "beautiful" waterfalls, but it was frozen and there was snow everywhere, wind was blowing very hard too. Dad took pictures of the waterfalls and the scenery.
Next we head to this place called the Ice Pavilion. It's cold in there. Like freezing cold with all the amazing ice sculptures and oh...This Pavilion isn't' man-made by the way. It was around like -10 degrees Celsius? Or is it -20? I forgot but it is supposed to colder than the waterfalls area.
Outside the Ice Pavilion, we played this snow-boarding thing where you have to sit on top of some circular board and you slide down. Mom was chanting away like mad when we hit the climax part. LOL
We headed for Otokoyama Sake Brewery Museum. Unfortunately, I'm still not of age yet. It's boring there, except we learnt a few things about sake and its history.
OO OO OO, the best part of this day is that we went to the Ishiya White Chocolate Factory. My God, it's a fucking awesome place! Sadly, all the chocolates are all sold out! In Chinese, it reads Bai Zhi Lian Ren Qiao Ke Li. Yeah there fake copies along the trip...I almost bought them..Later there was a sort of a show at the factory. That's the end of this day. We took pictures of course.

3rd Day
In the morning, we went to this place called the Ainu Museum. They are aborigines. They are like tribal kind of people but they are like the Asian form. Skip the ritual part, and the museum 'cause there are pictures! :D We bought souvenirs later at the shop. It turns out that they sell the same shit at all the souvenir shops we've been at. There were dogs there too...And some bears..Didn't took the bear pictures because they're nasty in everything.
Later we went to Hell Valley. The place took it's name too seriously that it literally means it that way. Oh gosh, I can't take the goddamn smell. It smells the same way your fart smells, so it's terrible.
This is the best lunch I ever had. Di Huang Xie (meaning Imperial Crab, I think so)is fucking tasteful and sweet..Followed by a plate of Sashimi and Tuna. Oh my fucking God...They don't even taste like fish. They taste more like pork meat. It's so tender when you bite into it. I took time to savour it of course..Who would want to put a good piece of meat into your stomach so fast?? I think I might have gotten fat from this meal. Damn it's good..
Next stop was the Bear Range. They claimed the bears to be the King of Hokkaido. So we fed the bears with apples that we bought, it's legal by the way, and blah blah blah..And then we went to our next hotel.

Day 4
SNOW-MOBILE BABY! It was an awesome experience. You guys know about Jackie Chan's films...He's running on the snow and there are people chasing after him in those vehicles. Yeah that's a snow-mobile. We're suppose to follow right behind each other and travel as a group. Something embarrassing happened to me. If you want to know, ask me, I don't want to type it down here. LOL. I then overtook 3 people who are slower than me. My God, it was super cool driving that mobile in the snow and with all the wind blowing. My legs felt super cold afterwards. Dad got overtaken by my sister. Well we could overtake other people as long we don't jeopardise our lives.
After this fun activity, we went to Sapporo. It's in the city. The Odori Park is one beautiful park with all the light displays. We spent our night in the concrete jungle and I was happy to see some fastfood restaurants. Sadly they didn't have McSpicy burger. Ebi burger was delicious by the way. You guys should give it a try when you're there.

Day 5
Nothing much happened today. We went to some shops in Otaru. It has the famous Kitaichi Glass Complex and the Otaru Music Box Museum but we didn't went in because we didn't listened to the tour guide..*looks around sheepishly* In the end we bought loads and loads of Hello Kitty stuff. Dad slipped and almost fell down, thank goodness my sister was around to break his fall. He hurt his right knee and was rubbing it non-stop at the lunch place.
We went shopping in Susukino, Hokkaido's famous nightlife district. Well there was nothing for was to shop because we don't want to spend too much money on clothes and other stuff. CLOTHES ARE FUCKING EXPENSIVE for your information. I've never seen such expensive clothes before.
Dinner was a barbeque buffet. They offered these 4 meats: Chicken, Pork, Lamb and Beef. We bought 2 200g of the best beef in whole of Japan and it's called Shen Fu Niu Pa(Steak). It was way better than the beef I ate in Wakayama. It's so juicy and tender. After eating this, there was no way you're gonna eat other beefs.
Mom bought nice-smelling pillows and it's supposed to stay nice-smelling for 5 years. I told her "No use buying this for me because in a year, I don't think it would survive me." Spend the night looking at Japanese girl students. Oh did I tell you? They were living in the same hotel as we do..so lucky me! :D

Day 6
We went back to Tokyo and headed for this place called Odaiba. It's located on an island and we have to cross this bridge called the Rainbow Bridge. Lunch was over too. Inside one of the malls, there's the BIGGEST Toyota showroom I ever seen in my life. Calculate it this way, in square metre, it's as big as half of Vivo City and it occupies 2 floors. I had fun there because there's this driving car simulator thingy. It turns out I'm a bad driver because I kept crashing it into the walls. And there's not even a single dent on the car.
From Odaiba, we went to the airport and off we flew, back to Singapore. I grabbed a few e-mail addresses from some people that are my age. I was kinda proud of myself. I faced my fear and asked them for it. I was a really shy guy..a few years back..I'm happy with what I got..

HOME SWEET HOME
Ciao, bye bye..
Thanks for reading this ultra long post...I tried my best already to shorten it :D