Spent 5 days in Okinawa mid-October. It was fun but we did not have the expected weather. Instead of warmth and beautiful sun, we had a typhoon! A couple of nice days though, so we took the opportunity to enjoy some outdoor activities!
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I was visiting a small town called Matsumoto in the prefecture of Nagano, Japan when I saw some crazy sandals in a local shop. They are pretty cool looking but they look a bit uncomfortable…
We went to visit Barry in Nagoya. We enjoyed a sunny day to walk around the city!
Beautiful modern architecture
Popular temple in Nagoya
Geta sandals outside the temple
Maneki Neko, the “the lucky cat” is a meeting point in Nagoya
Nagoya castle
European style building
Very creative metro station entrance
We had friends visiting over the weekend and as we went to Shinjuku, we decided to visit the “omoide yokocho”, the Memory Lane. It’s such an interesting area filled with small shops where one can enjoy fast food such as yakitori (meat skewers), ramen noodles, gyoza dumplings, with a beer. It’s hugely popular with salary men or just friends meeting after work.
The best of it all is the atmosphere of the place; it’s a few narrow streets with kegs of beer stacked in front of the shops, red lanterns hanging everywhere and smoke from the food being grilled
Before our flight back from Sapporo last week, we had to wait 6 hours at the airport. It was quite an annoying experience in perspective. However, the Sapporo New Chitose airport has the most amazing relaxation facilities I have ever seen! For 1,500¥ (roughly 10€) you have access to the Manyo complex where you have great hot spring baths, reasonable massage services, a lovely restaurant and some really relaxing reading/sleeping rooms.
Lobby of the premises:
Relaxation room: seats can be inclined fully like in first class and each comes with a TV; there was also a bookshelf where one could borrow books/manga. It was clearly Dave’s paradise…
My favourite place was the onsen (hot spring), obviously. Photo by manyo (it’s forbidden to take photos in the onsen area).
Delicious lunch in the restaurant: I ordered what’s called a sake oyako don, which mean “salmon mother and child”. Not a pretty name, but that’s what it is and it tasted delicious!
Finally, every customer is supplied with a yukata/pajama to wear within the premises. It feels really comfortable! It’s amazing to be so relaxed at the airport while waiting for the right time to go and check-in 🙂
I just love the Line Weather App so much and recently, just when I felt I was seeing the same illustrations over and over again, some new ones were released. Some really cute ones!
Walking on the street near a few days ago, I came across the cutest fire hydrant I have ever seen. I mean, it’s always a bonus if it’s cute, right? Still I am amazed at how cuteness plays such a huge part in Japanese life!
We took a trip to Hokkaido for the long weekend to relax for a bit. On the agenda: country side, hot spring relaxation, delicious food and nights out!
As we arrived to the new Chitose airport (Sapporo), we took the first train to a small city north of Sapporo called Asahikawa. We had read that the city itself wasn’t mind blowing, but it was a great departure point for a small hot spring village in the national park nearby. Indeed the city of Asahikawa wasn’t really exciting, a bit soulless to be honest. Our small business hotel, the Dormy Inn, had lovely hot spring on the rooftop, so it kind of made up for the lack of excitement! After a beer, we decided to go for ramen, which the city is famous for. We picked a highly recommended restaurant. It looked a bit dodgy but we’d been to dodgy looking places and had delicious food, so it did not bother us. However, we did not like the ramen at all! Asahikawa, you disappointed us a bit more…
Anyway, after a great night of sleep, we headed to Sounkyou hot spring village for a bit of nature sightseeing… The village is located in the mountains in the middle of a national park. We checked in at our ryokan and then took a rope way, then a chair lift and after a walk, we were able to admire the autumn views of the forest. It was really beautiful and so refreshing to get in such a place! However, it was so cold! Coming from 30 degrees in Tokyo to 10 degrees at the top of that mountain, we surely were surprised! In all honesty, it was very pretty and great to get out of Tokyo, but definitely not the most scenic place we’ve been.
The evening crab set that we chose for our dinner was amazing though and so worth the trip! There were a good 8 crab dishes each… Delicious!
The following day we headed to Sapporo, the main city of Hokkaido, that we had visited five years ago during the snow festival. After a quick visit to the hot spring facilities of our Dormy Inn, we met with a friend of Dave for lamb barbecue, a specialty of Sapporo. It was so yummy and the recommended restaurant, in the basement of the Sapporo Beer Museum) was really interesting, with its huge dinning room (an old factory room). I swear there were at least 100 tables with mountains of meat on each one of them!
As we were in Sapporo, we had to visit the Sapporo Ramen Republic where it’s possible to sample ramen from the various areas of Hokkaido. It’s a really cool place even though it’s a bit kitsch!
After Sapporo, we took a train and then a bus to the lake Shikotsu where we booked a night at a great ryokan on the lake. The lake area was stunning and our room had a superb view of the lake with the mountains in the background.
The onsen (hot spring) facilities were amazing. What is more relaxing than taking an outdoor bath while looking at such a beautiful scenic lake?
Then, there again, we had a really tasty dinner at our ryokan. It wasn’t crab, it was “seasonal specialties” such as autumn sashimi and mackerel rolls … yummy seasonal specialties!
To prepare for our journey back from the country to Sapporo, on the Hokkaido island, we stopped at a local convenient store. We bought all sorts of food for the train journey, including sushi, tofu, coffee, fruits, etc. When we saw the “Love love sand” chocolate sandwich, we had no other choice but buy it. I mean it’s the sandwich of love and it’s got chocolate in it!
Anyway, it turned out to be a pale imitation of a Nutella sandwich!
Last weekend, there was some kind of religious procession to the local temple. We went to see what it was about, but we arrived to late and we actually missed the procession itself. We saw people were queuing to pray at the temple or at the festival food stalls on the way to the temple. Festival food is always so exciting to get. We bought okonomiyaki for dinner and on the way home, we saw a friendly-looking lady selling bananachoco on sticks. Kids love them and so do adults, actually. That lady was joking with the kids and parents, and was quite successful at selling the bananachoco.
