Sunday, September 07, 2008

sorry for late update on my tour.. keke.. anyway.. this is gonna be a very very long post.. lol..

= Hokkaido Day 6: Sapporo - Chitose - Narita =

I actually had no recollections on the breakfast taken today. Haha. I only remember that we had the same style of breakfast as usual. Haha.

1st stop – Ishiya chocolate museum/factory
The long awaited stop was finally here. Muahahaha. I specially wore a chocolate colour tee with ‘chocolate’ word printed on it. Lol.
My first impression on this museum was we had come to visit a place during the ancient European time. There were many different kinds of flowers too! These flowers really brightened up one’s mind. The history of this chocolate museum and its well known product (ie white choc lover biscuit) and the unhappy incident that made them stopped their business for half a year (if I never remembered wrongly) were being brief by our tour guide. I don’t think I will post it out here as it was quite a long story. Haha.
Picture time!
Inside the museum:

They were made from sugar!! Amazing~ anyway, this is the landscape of the whole museum. Apart from these very castle-design buildings, the owner even has its own soccer field stadium. Cool! And the area he lived in is much bigger than this museum, with the similar design (if I never remember wrongly), at elsewhere. Now you know how rich he is right!?

Cute floor mat

We were to follow the cat’s paw prints in the museum.

Water fountain with a ceiling drawing in the main hall (use flash, too bright; don’t use, too dark. Sigh.)

The owner likes to collect antique chocolate or tea cup/pot sets. This is only a tiny part of the huge collections displayed in the museum.

Look at the glass ceiling~

Paw prints on the stairs. Meow~

Chocolate tiles on the wall~ (of cos not real choc la.. keke)

This is the production line. Look at the design on the walls! And it's really very clean inside this room.

This level got the do-it-yourself workshop and chocolate lounge. They were selling pretty and exquisite sugar crafts here~ I took many photos of them. Here are a few ones. Hee.

These are the desserts sold in the lounge. Omg~ the fondue looks nice and not so exp~ but got no time to try. Haiz.

Next we went to see toys~ another collection of the owner..

Hello kitty~ keke..

Astro boy~ Doraemon~

A showcase of plane models

Outside the museum:

The outlook of the museum

See the big colourful patch of flowers? It’s a special patch.

Tada~ This is the special part. Hello~

More flowers here~

Little glass house. It was a nice sunny day~

Eh. How to read the time?

The flowers were quite big there. It seemed that all were in full bloom. Anyway, they brightened up my day too ^^

Real tree house?

Help! This part of building was titling on one side! (I think you can distinguish the real person from the statues. Lol.)

The happy moments were really short lived. We didn’t get to enjoy to the fullest cause we were running against the time towards the end. I really wished we had more time here. Haiz.

2nd stop plus lunching – Rera, Chitose outlet mall

It is a factory outlet mall with many branded outlet shops and some restaurants. It’s situated near the Chitose airport and there is shuttle bus service from airport.

We had yummy Chinese food as lunch. It was a very satisfying lunch. This is where we had our lunch.

Soft and smooth steam egg~

After lunch, we were given a few hours to shop here. I was deciding whether to buy the shoes I wanted for quite some time but ended up not buying since I might not have the chance to wear it frequently. Haha. Nevertheless, I still managed to buy some stuff for myself.

Look at the super clear blue sky! What a nice weather!

Interesting name.

Oh ya, you can see flowers everywhere here too. Lol.

Too much time were given to us, we ended up doing nothing but roaming and loitering around to wait for the time to pass. We went to their food court with the intention to sit down and chill but the queue at this store was quite long so we can’t sit down for long and need to rush back to the bus. (The mall is very big, so we need to walk a distance to the car park.)

Crepes~ the matcha ice cream is really nice and has the authentic taste. (Unlike some others which have a faint or even no matcha taste at all.) The crepe skin is very soft and it’s quite different from what we have in sg.

3rd stop – Chitose airport

Time to bid goodbye to Hokkaido =(

While waiting for the transit to Tokyo Narita airport, we went to complete our shopping for souvenirs here.

Hello kitty statue at the front of a shop. It was standing almost half of my height! (You can see hello kitty almost everywhere in Japan. Haha.)

4th stop plus dinner– Tokyo Narita airport

On the way to our dinner place which I had forgotten where (but definitely near our hotel), we went through tunnel, met traffic jam, saw their subway trains passing by us, passed by 2 Ferris wheels and had a glimpse of night view of the Disneyland. Haha.

[Sidetrack a bit, the bus driver is very daring and skillful in driving. I guess to survive in city like Tokyo you have to be like this? Haha. Anyway, this was quite dangerous for a tour bus especially to a tour guide who needs to stand and move around in the bus.(side track some more, did I mention that there is a law for passengers in a bus to have seat belt fasten while seated at all time in the whole Japan)]

The best shot of the ferris wheel that I had. It was so hard to snap it when you were on board of a fast moving bus.

This was the street where our dinner place was located at. We had Chinese food again. Conclusion, the nicest Chinese food we had was the earlier one in the afternoon. ^^

5th stop – our hotel

This hotel was located near the airport. And maybe because of this, the interior design of the room was more of international type instead of Japanese style.

We had bigger bathroom space, bigger bath tub and I was quite surprise to see a plasma flat screen TV here. Lol. K, I sounded very sua-ku.

Anyway, we retreated to our hotel early again. This time there was no shops at all for us to walk around. Not even a convenient store. Zzz. Surrounding this hotel were other hotels, trees and roads. So boring!

Labels: vacations

5:35 pm

Sunday, September 07, 2008

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