Hokkaido summer holidays (8 days)- part 3

day 2


day 2: onsen (hot-spring bath)->buffet breakfast -> check out -> drive to Hell Valley(Jigokudani) -->drive to Noboribetsu Date Jidai Mura -> drive to lake Toya ->check in The Lake View Toya Nonokaze Resort -> buffet dinner->roof top onsen with fireworks

Getting up in the morning, before heading to the breaky, we went the onsen again in the morning. and this time, they have switched the male and female onsen, so the guests can experience all different onsen. 

Day 2 breakfast was buffet at the same place as last night, in fact most ryokan style accommodations offers half board, which means dinner and breakfast included. I finally remembered to take a shoot of the breakfast, but i felt embarrassed  to take picture of the whole buffet, so i only shot my own breaky and my friend's one. 

the top one is mine. from the up left is rice with Tororo (Grated Japanese Mountain Yam), very unique texture...sticky and gluey, but interesting to try it out. top central is baked potato with butter and Shio Kara (Salt Preserved Squid), that is very strange combination, but i have seen people recommended that, so i gave a try....err..i just have to say...not everyone can take it. of course the butter and potato must be okay, but the salt preserved squid has very strong fermented taste and plus raw seafood...bit hard to swallow to be honest. and to the right are natto (fermented bean) and salted fish roe. i had a glass of cold milk with this Japanese breakfast, cause i saw on internet that people said hokkaido has good dairy products, but since Australia has excellent dairy farms too, i cant see how special this milk was. then the rest of the plate are Onsen Tamago (Soft-Cooked Egg), some grilled fish, a few kinds of veg pickles,etc. 

my friend had the miso soup, bacon, grilled fishes, egg, tofu, scallop and milk too, 

after breakfast, we went back our room, packed up and went to check out. we had paid full amount onlinw when we made our booking, but were told to pay extra hot spring tax of 600 yen when checking out. 

anyway, according to the inital plan, we were going to the bear farm, but my friends were kinda turned off when she saw the flyer, she just realized the real bear isnt as cute as the teddy.

so moved to next agenda, the hell valley. actually hell valley wasnt far from our hotel, about 5-10 minutes walk maybe, but we still decided to drive up and ended up paying 500yen of parking rather than waste our free parking near hotel...damn. 

Most of the people only took photos in the front of hell valley look out, but actually there is a few good walking trails, so we went for a good walk since we passed the bear park, gave us some extra time.

all the way up hill, down hill, through forest, cross roads, over the mud,went the wrong side. ......,and we finally went down to the natural feet spa. 

it took us about 2 hrs till we returned to the car park, so its almost lunch time soon. our next destination was Noboribetsu Date Jidai Mura, which was only 10 min away from hell valley. Noboribetsu Date Jidai Mura is a Japanese historical theme park, where staff dress transitional clothes and have some performance shows (in Japanese). there is huge car park at the Date Jidai Mura, again they charged 500 yen fix rate for parking. 

we found most guests were from some tour groups, only a few people came them own. the front ticket lady was very pretty. I covered everyone's face on photos because i haven't asked permissions from friends to post those publicly. 

Once we entered the park, unfortunately it started to rain, then we thought we could have lunch first and hopefully the rain would stop soon. there were a couple restaurants in the park, but honestly no much choice, we ended up going to a ramen (noodle) place,,,but the food was just so so. the order process was quite interesting, that you bought the tickets from a machine for the food of your choice, then you passed the tickets to the kitchen staff and they would call you up once your food is ready. 

Before the gyoza(dumpling) come out, we heard a ding sound , like a microwave, no wonder they were so dry. 
my friend had the miso ramen. 
i had the curry ramen, nothing outstanding. but their seaweed had the park's logo on it. 

after lunch, its time for one of the show, it just happened the tour group went the same show , so the room were so crowed , and we can barely find place to sit on the floor. they gave everyone a plastic bag to put your shoes, and a small piece of paper to warp coins and later you can threw it to the stage as tips. 

the show was played in Japanese, and the host sometimes popped up a coulple words in different language so the foreign audience could guess whats going on. 

after that show, we went to another cat alien show, which was meant to be comdeny, but  because its all in Japanese most of the audience didnt understand at all...that was really dry. the good thing is all the actors were there for photos after the show. 

what we liked the most was the ninja maze. i wont spoil the fun, but if anyone ever visit this park, please dont forget to try the maze. 

once the tour group left, the street seemed so quite.

the park closed at 5pm, but as mentioned....after the tour groups left...it looked like a ghost town. 

i dont mind the theme park as long as it wasnt packed with tour groups. but the entry tickets were bit expensive. 

we left the park at 5pm and drove to lake Toya. we stayed at The Lake View Toya Nonokaze Resort on day 2. 

This hotel offers valet parking, so we just left the car key to the door boy. 

after walked along a nice long corridor, 

we were surprised with such stunning view. 

this was our room for four. two single beds with two japanese futon beds near the window. 

a yoga pose？...pretended to do yoga on roof top, but was really just in front of the window in our hotel room. 

we asked the hotel staff to shot this for us when they finished setting up the futon beds. 

cause we didnt quite enjoy the ramen lunch, everyone were hungry by dinner time. but we were told the dinning hell was full when we got there, had to waited for 15 min...but with a view like that, 15min was acceptable.  

took a few selfie there, then we got called our room number that the table was ready then. 

wow, it was so fancy. 

the food quality was better than last night too...well...the price were higher, make sense.  

interesting cheery tomato, in the right bottom corner of the plate, there were 5 different color. all tasted close enough, can t reallt tell much difference, but all were sweet. 

after dinner, its onsen time again. 

every summer, lake toya has free fireworks every night betweern 20:45pm to 21:05. i read some one suggested to watch the firework in the infinity onsen pool on the roof top. no surprise, by 21:05, there were quite lot people in the roof top pool waiting for the fireworks. but still okay, not over crowded...otherwise could be quite awkward to get too close with naked strangers. the fireworks was as amazing as our new year eve, but considering its free on every day, that still quite good amount of money burned each night.

there werent much to do in lake toya during the night. no shopping street around, just saw one 7-eleven store on the corner. 

Hokkaido summer holidays (8 days)- part 2

Day 1 day 1 : arrive Chitose airport -> get the car (Nissan Car Rental) -> drive to Noboribetsu -> check in  Hotel Mahoroba -> buffet dinner ->wander around the onsen street ->onsen (hot-spring bath) Our flight from Taipei to Chitose was delayed for an hour. i checked online history of this flight number and found it has been delayed every single days for the past 14 days.   anyway,  we still landed safely and were ready for our holidays.  once you walked out the arrive gate, there is a information service desk on the left, we asked the information about the free wifi cause we didnt want to use our phone for data roaming. and also inquired the car rental pick up place, we were told to take lift to go to group level and we would find that "car rental service desk". Guess why i have to highlight the rental service desk? because we were surprised to see a Japanese lady sitting in the corner with a folding chair and a small flag signed with "Nissan rent a car" in her car....and not desk.....lol....this probably the cheapest "service desk" i ever seen. as payment was made when we booked the car, even it did look goody for us, we still decided to go ahead. Anyway, she confirmed our identity and made a call to someone. soon enough we got picked up by a bus. it didnt take long for us to arrive at the actually rental company,  after signing all the paper work, photo copy our documents, we went to car park and checked the condition of the car. i were over cautious at the time, cause i have had bad experience in qld when i didnt check the car carefully in the beginning and the rental company accused me damaged the rental car, lucky that was resolved after they reviewing some of past records, but did waste lots of time and unnecessary stress, so i have learnt from lessons.  By the way, we were not able to buy the Hokkaido Expressway Pass(6200yen for 6 days) , because our return location was different from the pick up location. i dont understand why this mattered, but the counter lady had quite poor English, and she cant explain to us. i did calculate our total toll charge for this entire trip, which was 11490 yen(included 3000+ yen by my bubble head friend went to the wrong way), so we could have saved my money. Also, the toll gate are all cash only, so make sure if you have local money on you if you cant get the ETC or the toll pass.  if anyone interested to know this tollway pass, here is the link: http://www.driveplaza.com/trip/drawari/hokkaido_expass/en.html we rented an English GPS, but the GPS only spoke English as turn left or right, the address enter menu was only recognize Japanese.   . the good thing is we can also put map code (which turn out to be the  phone number) of the destination.  it took us about an hour to get to Noboribetsu. once off the high way, we saw this huge demon statuette pointing to the left, which was the way to go the onsen town.  the road got foggy while we drove.  Photos were taken without filter  i was a bit worried about the parking, but the staff in front of the hotel Mahoroba were very helpful, and showed me the parking on the opposite.  (the hotel sign, that i only took the photo at night, were too busy check in during day light) view from our room, and can see our car in the car park from here.  our accommodation tonight included a dinner buffet, which served unlimited crab (three kinds of crab legs) of course, eating crab can be messy, so our hands were too dirty to use camera, unfortunately i didnt take any other photos.  we were happy with the dinner, but the most popular food wasn't the crab or steak, surprisingly everyone was queuing to get more rock-melon, which were very sweet, soft and juicy.  we were so full after dinner, so decide to walk around the town street before dipping into hot spring.  after wandering around, we went back our room to get change cloth for hot spring/onsen, and found our futon beds were made ready.  you wish......that photos were allowed in the onsen...nuh...you cant. so we couldnt get any photos of onse. but hotel Mahoroba is claimed to have the biggest outdoor onsen, so we wouldn't want to miss that out. and it was the one have the biggest onsen among all the hotels we stayed in hokkaido.  the onsen open till like 3am, but the outdoor onsen closed at 12 midnight.  we had a good bath before bed, and were looking forwards to the rest of the trip, only day 1 for now.