Day 5

Location: Sapporo, Hokkaido
Weather: about -6 deg, cloudy, SNOWING
Author: Chrissie (equally hardworking!)

Hi all, you must be wondering what happened to Day 3 and 4!! Heh heh, those posts are coming up soon, but I thought we'd start off with Day 5 since it'll probably be a short read. We've been coming back to the hotel late-ish and have been too tired (more like lazy) to update our blog! Gomen!

We checked out of our first hotel this morning and moved to our second one. I must say it wasn't much of a trek as they're literally 30 m apart!! It was a lucky coincidence as I wasn't looking forward to lugging my suitcase around in the ice and cold! I had sore muscles the first day we arrived in sapporo from pulling my 25kg bags around!


The pretty river view from our second hotel room. Our first hotel is the grey building across the street.

We didn't do much today. As it was hotel transitioning day, we didn't make any plans to travel or sightsee and decided to go shopping for winter coats until our check-in time. I think the winter sales are about to end as they've already started bringing out the spring fashion. I feel cold looking at the new spring arrivals, there's not enough material in the clothes!

We entered a few department stores, but a lot of them were way out of our budget. Then just as we were walking out of one of the stores, it started lightly snowing! We were so excited because it was our first time seeing snow actually falling and not just on the ground! Being the obvious tourist that I am, I whipped out my camera to take a couple of videos of the snow falling. The snowflakes were very small and cute at first, quite pleasant when snow is lightly drizzling. Not so pleasant when they become heavier and the wind starts whipping them about and they're flying everywhere, especially into your eyes! As soon as that happened we went seeking the comfort of indoors.

We spent the rest of the time in Sapporo Station since it has quite a few underground shopping alleys. For lunch we went to one of our favourite food basement at Esta's!! Amy had two of her favourite japanese food combined - omurice curry which was very ooishii (delicious) and I had soup curry. Soup curry apparently originated from Hokkaido so I had high hopes for it, but it just tasted like a souped up version of normal japanese curry. It still hasn't discouraged me from wanting to try one cooked in a restaurant though! I'm feeling very optimistic!

Amy found a really nice winter coat in one of the underground stores. It's very cool and she got it for a really great price on top of that, so you can imagine what a very happy camper she was!! I think she will post a picture of it up the next time she blogs to show it off, heh heh. Anyway, we took the subway back to our hotel because it was seriously snowing furiously outside and we weren't brave enough (I like to think not dumb enough) yet to walk out in that kind of weather! We are now holed up in our hotel room and using the spare time to update our blog (or in Amy's case, reading manga and taking a nap). I'll post up our Day 3 and 4 activities next!


Snow falling outside our hotel window! Glad I'm inside our toasty warm hotel room.

Day 2

Location: Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan
Weather: Cold
Author: Amy (still the hardworking one)

Konbanwa! By the end of Day 2, I am really glad Chrissie is here cause her understanding of Japanese really helped.

Woke up maybe 9am this morning. Quite late considering we went to sleep about 11pm the night before. Had a really deep sleep. Probably helped that I was wearing eye shades so morning sun? what morning sun? I felt like a falcon (falcons calm down when their eyes are shaded). Maybe can try this on Justin to make him sleep but will need to find something that he can't take off.

Today we just spent on shopping. Had breakfast at Mos Burger before starting our day.

Chrissie's teriyaki chicken and Amy's yakiniku burger

Amy enjoying long-awaited Mos Burger!

We went shopping with the primary intention of getting a winter jacket. A lot of places still have winter sales with discounts up to 70%. Some jackets were only 2000 yen! But the nicer ones were maybe 6000 yen.

We were very disciplined and didn't go crazy buying stuff. I bought some cute hair accessories (as expected) and some toiletries but that was it.

We had lunch at a soba place. We chose it cause there seemed to be a lot of people going there (looked busy inside compared to other places). I got a teriyaki-don and soba set. It was a lot!! Chrissie got cold soba. There was also this pot of soup they gave us so I poured that for Chrissie but it turned out it was for after the meal. There were 2 ladies in kimonos on one side and 2 businessmen on the other side who stared at us when the waitress told us that the soup was for after the meal and she even changed Chrissie's bowl! Sheesh! Like I knew! I wasn't bothered by it cause this is all a learning experience. I'm certainly not going to know how to eat anything until I try it and make mistakes and someone points it out.

Because lunch was soooo filling, we skipped dinner. Well, it's only 7pm so far, so I may still get dinner if I feel like it. Chrissie fell asleep already. I think she's taking a nap.

Does anyone think my posts are too long? I'm writing this post as if I were writing to Danny, see. So there will be a looooot of details. But minus the embarassing and mushy bits.

Sorry to OC if I haven't answered your sms! I tried sms-ing Danny but he didn't receive it so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. So I emailed you instead.

Coming Saturday, my friend Yuriko is bringing us to Shikotsu Lake which is about 2 hours drive from Sapporo. She recommended an onsen too but I felt very shy so said maybe next time... We're meeting up again the next Friday for dinner at a cafe Yuri is recommending (osusume). I am trying to remember common Japanese words so practising when I can.

We also got a whole lot of brochures from the tourist information center. Next places to visit are:

- Asahiyama Zoo (very famous zoo with animals in their natural environment)
- Noboribetsu (Bear Park, edo-period enacted shinobi village)
- skiing resort (I want to go to the ones kiddies go to!!! Cause they look more fun! Can play games instead of just skiing)
- Lake Toya & Lake Shikotsu (very beautiful lake and national park)
- Houheikyo Onsen (outdoor onsen. Looks reaaaally good! Worth putting aside my shyness & cellulite-consciousness for this onsen experience.

Chrissie woke up already. She is translating what the bath salts packet says. I got a packet of something to put in the bath for soaking. And she just read it and said there is a warning about something but she can't translate what it is warning against!!! Oh no! I think I need to ask Yuri before I try it...

We are wathchin a TV program and the guy is cooking okonomiyaki. I want to eat too!!!! So going to get me curry rice and okonomiyaki soon!

Anyway, let's end this here...

End of Day 2.... possibly...

Day 1

Location: Tokyo, Japan & Sapporo, Hokkaido
Weather: Mildly cold & pretty damned cold!
Author: Amy (the hardworking one)

Hi all! Welcome to our very first blog and the very first post of the blog!

We left Perth, Australia at around 11pm and arrived at Narita Airport, Tokyo, Japan at 9am the following day. The flight was very tiring as can be expected from long flight, small seats and lousy food. I managed to sleep a bit so wasn't too tired but Chrissie only caught maybe 2 hours of sleep.

After breakfast, we gave up trying to sleep and just talked and sat around staring into space. I played with Chrissie's ebook which is actually quite fun! The games, I mean. As Danny can guess, I was playing all the puzzle games. I don't like games where things chase me, see, so can only play puzzle games or bubble games.

Here's us in the plane. Chrissie is 200% against me putting up this picture and I will never hear the end of it but here it is anyway. We probably look really tired so forgive the bags under the eyes.

Chris and me in Qantas plane on our way to Tokyo, Japan

Around this time, I thought maybe I should take more pictures for the blog so started taking pics outside the window. There was actually a potentially good picture but I was too late! It would have been a picture of a round 'rainbow' with the shadow of the plane in it. Probably a result of the light reflecting off the plane onto the clouds.

Anyhoo, I took this instead. A picture of the Japan coastline, marking when we actually 'entered' Japan. (I suspect that there will be lots of pics early on in our adventure but will eventually dwindle off so appreciate it while you can!)

Japan coastline

Then we slowly made our way to Haneda airport where we took the next flight with JAL to Sapporo, Hokkaido. We had to kill 2 hours waiting for the flight so walked around a bit. Not too much to see but took some pics just to put in the blog.

There was this toy place with really a lot of toys, called Juveniland. There was a giant robot in there reaching up to the ceiling of the shop. And lots of cute toys....

Giant robot in the shop. We were a bit shy about taking this picture cause we didn't know if it would have been ok to take pics of the merchandise.


Tiny cute little robots on display


Fluoroscent flowers that slowly swaaaaays left and right

The flight to Sapporo was pretty empty. We had a huuuuge plane! Don't know why they had to use such a big plane for so few people.

Sapporo from the sky is really beautiful because it is blanketed by white snow over huge fields.

Sapporo from air (near coastline)

We were pretty tired by this time so all we wanted to do was get to the hotel quickly and rest. The main train station we had to transit at was very busy. But we persevered and made our way through the crowds anyway. Danny, you would have gotten claustrophobic and refused to walk further.

We had to walk to our hotel from the train station and the roads were very slippery because of the ice. I was veeeeery slow and Chris had to wait for me quite a lot as I was lagging behind. It was pretty cold. I think it was zero degrees or thereabouts.

Got to the hotel without any incidents. Too tired to go far for dinner so went to 7-11 and got bentos. Danny would have liked to go... I took pictures of my bento just to show Danny cause he loooooves the bentos in the convenience stores in Japan. I reckon kombi stores are his best friends!


My bento and snacks (for just in case I got the munchies)

Planned our next days events and then went to sleep. Did I mention that our hotel room is very small? Chrissie took pics so she may show it on her posts. She wanted me to mention that bedroom slippers are provided.... for maybe 3 metres of carpet. You would have put them on, taken 2 steps and would need to take them off already to either go to the bathroom, bed or out the door.

Pretty much end of Day 1.