Hokkaido: Noboribetsu Mountain

As promised, here are the photos taken at the steaming Noboribetsu Mountain.

See how beautiful the scenery made by these hot steams.

The weather was real cold in mid November, though the sun was shiny bright.

Getting more steams now as we went further down the mountain.



This was taken quite steep down the mountain as you can see loads of steams coming from the hot ground.

Hubby loves the scenery. It's simply lovely.

Can you imagine yourself flying about above the ground with these steams rising just like those old day wu-xia heroes and heroins.

Hubby took lots of picture in this place. One of his favorite touristy place in Hokkaido.

Love this pic. What a happy couple with the beautiful scene, a memorable place and a must-visit place in Hokkaido.

Welcome To Noboribetsu Mountain!

This was taken when we were about to leave. It is the entrance to Noboribetsu Mountain.

Hokkaido Ramen Street... Slurpp...

This is the famous Ramen Street in Hokkaido. All the inn-like stalls are selling the yummy springy Japanese ramen. People have to queue up just to have a hot bowl of ramen especially during the cold winter.

While waiting for our Ramen, hubby chit-chatting with the cook in Japanese, yes hubby does speak Japanese.

We ordered two different flavour of ramen. This is his, ramen served with sweet corn and butter on top of the traditional pork slices.


This is mine, the very conventional Japanese ramen in miso soup. Yummyyy...


The cook helped to take this photo of us having ramen in his stall. A thumb-up for the flavourful ramen.

A Visit to Samurai Village, Hokkaido

Guess what, he is a real human.

There are lots of shops along the pathway selling special Japanese delicacies including some yummy ice-cream.

He is the most amusing Samurai. If you wanna capture a heroic shot, you will pretend to be killed by you. He brought lots of laughter after all. Everyone was eager to take photo with him. LOL

One of the shop selling Japanese delicacies.

Japanese are darn friendly.

Geisha show, co-starred by one of our travel buddies.

See the General seated in the middle, he is our travel buddy. It is not easy to co-star in this Geisha show, in addition to have to beat other representatives from other travel groups (by paper-scissor-stone), one has to be good in alcohol. Can you see that the Geisha is pouring sake into the "cup" - you gonna empty the "cup" or else they won't let you go. My poor buddy...

Our tour guide told us that it takes ONE and A-Half hour to dress up a Geisha including the makeup, hair style and kimono. It is sure very a long and tiresome process.

Ninja show. We were told to to snap photos when everything turned dark. Wonder why?

It was quite an action-packed show. Arhh, I forgot to mention that there is this culture that before we went in for the show, be it Geisha show or Ninja show, we were given pieces of white paper. It was for us to wrap some coins and throw it onto the stage when the show ended to show our appreciation.

Little mock-up of traditional Japanese village - depicting traditional Japanese lifestyle.



Traditional Clock Tower

Maneki Neko - the Japanese Lucky Cat

Photo Sharing: Hokkaido Trip - Day 2 @ 15-Nov-2008

Second day in Hokkaido, the weather was getting colder. Sun rises as early as 5.30am, and sunset at around 5pm. Kinda weird for us Malaysian. Traveling in winter somehow gives you shorten time for sight-seeing and shopping as well. Shops only open at 8 or 9 am, but some close as soon as the night kicks in, eg. around 6-ish in the evening when sky turns dark.

Here are some of the photos taken in day 2.

Nice scenery surrounding the hotel we stayed on the first night - Toya Sun Palace, a 5-star hotel.

The view is really magnificent, which I thought can only be seen on postcards. LOL

Do you see the mountain topped with white snow? Our tour guide said it is the local version of Mount Fuji in Sapporo.

Our first stop for the day was the steaming Noboribetsu Mountain. Can you see the whitish steam vaporized at the back?

You will see more steams as you go further down. It gives the illusion of the Chinese KungFu movie where the heroes and heroins flying and jumping around in the sky with these white steams. Haha...

More photos coming up soon. Stay tune ...

My Hokkaido Trip - Day 1@ 14-Nov-2008

Just came back from my Hokkaido trip last week. It was indeed a very good trip with very good meals.

We had crabs in almost every meal. The crabs in Hokkaido are super huge. They are called spider crab with long "legs". The meat is super fresh and sweet. Hokkaido is also well-known for its hairy crab. I don't like hairy crab as much as the spider crab, as you don't find much meat in hairy crab. If you love eating crab roes, then you must not miss hairy crab.

Here I present to you some of the photos taken in Hokkaido.

Our first meal in Hokkaido. It's a Ramen steamboat - the portion you see above is for one person. The yellowish noodle is the Japanese ramen - it is chewy and springy, unlike our local yellow noodle. Do you notice the prawn. We called it pregnant prawn as it has a lot of blackish roes in its belly that made it looked like pregnant. This meal is accomplished with a bowl of japanese sticky rice topped with reddish salmon meat, potato salad, baby scallops and some pickles. We were told to put in the ramen into the soup and let it boiled for a while before serving.

That was me in the picture, looked tired after the long flight.

Our Malay trip mates. This restaurant prepared a special soup base to cater for our malay mates.

Our first stop was to visit the King of Hokkaido - the Bear Ranch @ Showa - Shinzan Kuma Bokujo.


These huge bears fed on apples. They just love apples.

This is a baby bear - look very similar to racoon.

Hubby acting terrified with the huge bear behind him.

Can you see the huge scallops? There are lots of these scallops in Hokkaido. We were served unlimited of these baked scallops in the Hotel's Buffet dinner on the first day. It's yummilicious.

Long Holiday Ever - Part 1

I have not been updating my blog for the past few days. I was on a long vacation leave with my dear family. Both my hubby and I took 2 days off on 28 & 29 Aug, to make up a 5-day long holiday.

Too bad that we wasted the first day, both hubby and I got to go back to office to settle some last minute matters. At first, we thought of spending half a day in the office, but you know what, we only managed to leave office at 3pm. That's really upsetting especially for our little girls -- they looked forward for the holidays.

After having a quick lunch, we quickly fetched the girls from my In-law's house. But at this point of time, our plan all gone. What can we do at 3-ish except going for movie. We drove to Cineleisure to check if there's any suitable movie for the girls. We ended up watching an action movie, thought it would be interesting for the girls - Babylon A. D

What I can say about this movie is that: it is too complicated, the story line is good, but too many things are unexplained.

Below are the pictures of the girls with their favorite movie poster and the much talked-about toy in town - Wall-E and his girlfriend Eve