nice big fresh sunflower~ (see how big was it~) got it during lunch time at junction area last thurs.. the people giving out this along with an brochure, were promoting on the Singapore Sun festival... think it's some music and lifestyle festival, celebrating the art of living well...jpg)
i left it standing on my desk, on the next day when i came back, it withered and couldnt stand well on the desk.. i wanted to bring it home but i forgot!!Labels: work
11:39 pm
~Hokkaido
During day 5, most of the females (including me) in our group wore either red or pink tops. What a coincidence!
I took many photos on this day. So much so that I need to upload many here, those I had left out earlier.
During the few hours journey to the river, we stopped for a toilet break as well as a change in the driver. (Side note: the driver had to record down every stop we had been.) There were a few hot food vending machines inside the convenient shop.
While walking down the street, I saw some workers cementing the pavement.
Is this an indication of the slope steepness?
Red post box. So vintage~ (It was not only for beautifying the street. It's really in use. Haha)
This police car looks like a toy car. Oops.
I like this photo very much. I just captured my shadow on the ground without thinking much, and it turned out nice! Got feel wor. Keke.
This was the toilet sign in the subway area.
Kino bookstore. So familiar! Haha.
This subway table of fares was mounted above the ticketing machine. So complicated!
Here were the subway ticketing machines. (This photo was underexposed. Zzz.)
This was the floor plan for basement 2 ie subway stations.
These promotional items look delicious.
The food in the Mac here are more expensive than that in sg.
Labels: vacations
11:52 pm
= Hokkaido Day 5: Sounkyo - Otaru - Sapporo
Today we were running on a tight schedule. There were many places for us to visit, thus we need to have our breakfast earlier which means, we need to wake up early. Oh well, since we had an early sleep on previous night, so it doesn't matter much. Haha.
This is the famous canal. Eh, I've forgotten the history of this canal. Oops.
The information booth was located at one side while the little ice cream shop was on the other side. Quite a warm day but was still cooling =)
There were other tour groups at this area too. This was put up for group photos by some other tour group.
There were many rickshaws around this spot. Note that these pullers were all young lads. (A few were shuai ge. Hehe.)
Interesting building. Observatory tower?
After a few mins journey on bus, we reached our lunching place. It was around 1130am then. There was a mini seafood market (dry) at the ground floor while our meals were at the second floor. I think this place was catered for tourist only.
At the ground level, next to the entrance, there was a special fish tank. It contained these special little pretty creatures which live in the cold water. They were called sea angel. They indeed live up to their names as angel. Why is it so? (Anyway, if you go for a winter trip here, you might be brought to see them out in the sea!)
Cos the body was transparent except for its little red heart (I think). And they have little lookalike horns on top of their head. As they swam upwards, the flapping movements were like angels flapping their wings when flying. (It's very hard to see from the photo. I found a video from youtube. Must go and see!! They are really cute!)
Lunch = mini steamboat set + a salted fish + melon-flavored jelly. The salted fish was their specialty. It tasted good but it became very salty towards the end. (Bad experience again after the salty mua chee in previous day) The jelly was very sweet and yummy~ I was quite sick of having seafood pot for meal again. Luckily there were the fish and jelly. Haha.
2nd stop –
After lunch, we were brought to this street nearby. We were given an hour plus to shop around. There were quite a few interesting buildings and sights along this street. As for buying, there were a lot of cute, exquisite stuffs. But we didn't buy them as they were not cheap and not a necessity. Haha. Food wise, we were very full (as usual) and thus we only bought snacks and dessert to eat. It was a pity that we didn't try out the seafood along the stalls. Oh ya, our tour guide mentioned that most shops provide food sampling. It's ok to taste it even if you don't have the intention to buy. Just smile back and say it was delicious will do. Lol.
Picture time:
This was the street we walked.
We bought cream puff from the 六花亭
The cream puffs - custard on top, strawberry at the bottom.
Look at the custard filling~ Not too sweet nor creamy! It was so fresh and tasty that it made you feel like eating a few more. Haha. (Personally I think it was nicer than beard papa)
this cake looked like 千层糕 (qian ceng gao) except that it was ring-shaped with maple syrup in between the layers. Haha. We bought home this since it can be stored for quite sometime. But it doesn’t taste as blissfully nice as we had tasted in the shop (free sampling inside the shop).
Flowers were everywhere as usual! My mum was so happy. Lol. (It was very glaring then. But the weather was wonderful.)
This was a shop selling chocolates and there was a café inside too.
Road junction
The famous music box museum/house
This tower clock would sound every half hour. The smoke would be released according to the rhythm of the song. So interesting.
Inside the music box shop. There were so many cute and exquisite music boxes! So tempted to buy! (Can you spot me? Lol)
There were many many many cartoon characters being sold in this Character House! Doraemon, Hello Kitty, 龙猫 (Long Mao) and its family, Mickey and family, Winnie the Pooh and family, Smurfs, you name it they have it. Haha.
This was taken secretly inside the house. Haha. How I wished I was loaded with money then!
Cute cat statues. Someone spoilt the first cat? (It was so glaring!)
Hello Kitty!~ I didn't go into this shop. Cos I didn't want to come out feeling disappointed. Haha.
Horse carriage! I had never thought of seeing it here. Haha.
Look at the variety of ice cream it had. Haha. I wanted to try the 5 flavours one. But my parents had already bought the lavender one and no one wanted to share a new one with me.
This was the 5 flavour ice cream. Cool~3rd stop – dry seafood market
Quite a useless trip since we only walked around most of the time. Haha. The adults (I'm the youngest there, remember? Hee) only bought a few items.
The only excited part was that we were able to catch a glimpse of this~
We were brought here to buy all our souvenirs. Although this shop was a very small one, we were able to find most of the famous local products here. Haha. Anyway, the street decorations opposite looked nice. A pity that we didn’t have a chance to shop inside as this was not part of our tour.
The main purpose of coming here was to see this:
The famous Sapporo TV tower. I think it will look nicer when the lights were lighted up at night.
Free and easy time again. We didn’t go up the TV tower (cause the tour guide didn't tell us we can go up and even we could, there wasn't enough time to do so). Instead we went to explore the subways and shops underground. We must walk with 'care' as the underground shopping mall was very big enough to make you to lose your way. Haha. (It was as if another district underground. It allowed you to walk from one town to another.)
The entrance to the underground mall/subway.
Inside the mall.
Direction signs everywhere. Clear indications, very thoughtful!
You need to go further down to take the subway.
I wonder is there anyone who will walk through this without buying a ticket.
3 main subway lines.
Map for this town. Look at this grid system! I don’t think you can get lost easily here. Haha.
Dinner time~
We had early dinner at around 5pm.
It was teppanyaki again. Zzz.
There was a certificate for the beef too! Look how pink (not red wor, is Pink~) the meat was. Plus the fats were lined out evenly and nicely. Keke.
After a little seasoning on each slice, the chef cooked them on the spot in front of us. I even recorded the whole process down. Lol.
It was medium rare done. The pink meat with a bit burnt outside and a little reddish bloody juice on the plate looked appealing! (Forgive me for an off-focused shot as this is the only photo I had) I finally understood how come it was so expensive. Compared to the normal beef taken during day 4 (which was quite hard and super chewy), this was very juicy, super tender and the crispiness outside added more points. (It was like chewing on fish except that the meat was not as flaky as fish)! Yum yum~ It wasn’t as raw as I thought too. Oops, I’m hungry now~
6th stop – hotel and city shopping time
When we retreated to our hotel after dinner, it was about 6+pm (jap time). This was the smallest hotel ever stayed in
Day view from our room.
Night view from our room.We went to Robinson departmental store to find the 100 yen shop. Spent a lot time there and I was fascinated by the Hello Kitty stuff sold in there. (Ok, I admit I craze over them. But not to the extent of being a Hello Kitty freak =p I am a rational person hor.) Anyway, it was something like Daiso here and some of the things were really worth it, for example, the sweets, seaweeds and drinks, basically the food. Haha.
I spotted an Adidas bag there. It was a new design and I was not sure whether the price was considered cheaper since I never do any homework on Adidas pricing. I struggled for a long time and decided not to buy it at the end, as it was not a must, I couldn’t decide on the colour and size of the bag, and I felt so bad spending my brother’s money (Cos he offered to buy for me. Where can you find such sister? =P)
After that, we explored the area outside. It was quite cold and we didn’t bring extra jacket, kind of didn’t expect it to be so cold. So we went down to the underground mall, which was warmer inside. Since it was near 8pm, most shops were prepared to close for the day, therefore we didn’t have any chance to shop much too.
Then, we went back to Robinson basement to shop at their supermarket as it was closed at 10pm. I wanted to their sushi but I was too full to eat a platter of sushi and they didn’t sell individual sushi =(
Here were the night views of
Ferris wheel~
The bus and its bus stop. There were many bicycles parked along the road as usual.Labels: vacations
11:37 pm