Hokkaido More

This is Nonky Land. Nonky Land is like Disney Land, but where the rides get built one per year, but they let people in before anything is finished. It's got a hillside of purple flowers though, I'll give it that. It's hard to drive past.



Some prison we visited. They really tried hard to make it entertaining. There were mock ups with dummies, some were moving. What can I say, it's a prison and designed from the first to be boring and punishing. The only food you could buy for lunch was a prisoner's meal, soup, rice and fish.



This is an artwork and a slide. A brilliant idea, though the slide was really steep and fast. In Sapporo.



Nonky Land again. I kid you not but this was one of only two rides in the 'fun park'. You can see in the background another big draw, a penned in area with some gym balls in it.



This is a perfectly clear shot of Bek and I on a motorboat, skimming across a lake. Why is this photo, taken with one arm on a bumpy boat ride, totally unblurred?

Forgotten Shots

In the Winter the weight of snow on the branches of these trees would break them. So they plant a tall pole and tie the extremity of each branch to the top of it. Everything they do looks pretty.



This is Aussie Hill, where they keep kangaroos in the snow all Winter. It's at a zoo somewhere.

Pollution

Today there was a pollution warning broadcast in Japanese and English from a loudspeaker somewhere outside our apartment just now. It was spoken in really slow, stilted English, but I think it said the warning was coming from some government office or other, and it was in effect. Of course not knowing what this entailed I didn't know what to do. I just shut the windows. However, I think it was Jerry Seinfeld who said "doesn't the air in your apartment come from the air outside your apartment?" The warning was in effect too long to hold my breath though.

Hurrgh!

Nothing like a body shot in the morning to wake you up. I'm going to market a coffee called 'ice water down your back'.



The picture sucks, but so do the names of these buildings.



This obviously describes the employees, who scurry about looking for the right shoe size and scratch their backsides with relish.



i.e. make your dick stand up medicine.

Birthday Presents

Jannma sent Alice an extra room for our small apartment. She spends a great deal of time inside lately. I'm going to try to hang it off the side balcony like a window box.



Bek and I bought her a keyboard and a guitar to play around on. She looks so Indie in her Nepalese beanie.





We also had cake, so she tried hard to get it out and eat it all the way from the bakery to the restaurant.

Hokkaido Food

Japan is known for it's healthy food, but this reputation seems to be based only on sushi, because so much of Japanese food seems wholly unhealthy to me. I suppose my only idea of the food comes from dining out, and dining out all the time in any country is not going to be too good for you. However, Japanese cuisine is heavily into the fried, adding mayonnaise to everything, eating fatty meat and frying.

In Hokkaido we stayed in two ryokan, a type of Japanese traditional inn with a set breakfast and dinner. These meals consist of multiple small dishes and centred heavily on seafood. You can see above the meal which is served in the room.



This is a one person serving. You can see some tempura, sushi, rice, egg custard, vegetables, soup, prawns and other stuff. My mother doesn't actually like seafood that much, so at our second ryokan, on the second night, they seemed to adjust the menu to a more Western taste. We got some bread, as well as two types of crab, lobster, steak and sushi. This was altogether too much to eat. However we all did our best and they can be commended for effort.



Also we encountered a lot of soft serve ice cream with weird flavours, as Hokkaido is famous for dairy products. We found beer and potato flavoured ice creams, in synergistic combinations of famous fare.

Hokkaido

This is at the top of one of the many active volcanoes in Japan. I think Bek is tickling Kunugi-san to make him laugh.


We went to lake Toya in Hokkaido, which is a volcanic lake. In the middle is a reserve filled with deer. So we took a stroll, as we haven't been into the Japanese wilderness much yet.



There is a famous zoo in Asahikawa, where the animals are kept in quite interesting and stimulating environments. I thought these monkeys looked pretty cool trying to catch the eye of the zoo keepers inside.


Here is the second volcanic lake we visited. This was the best day for weather, as we were driving to the hotel. After this there was heavy mist and rain and we could barely see anything going over the hills.



Japanese hotels think of everything, even a handy place to store your children.

Brazen

Dummies in Sapporo have a bit of an attitude.



Tiny.

Alice's Second Birthday

Alice had her second birthday in Hokkaido, so we had a low-key celebration. We bought a cake and had some yakitori, which is chicken kebabs. She's not smiling because she's blowing out the candles.

Hokkaido English

We went to Hokkaido for Golden Week. Here's a lazy post, with some Hokkaido.



Blaze dust probably means burnable rubbish.



Hokkaido is famous for potatoes. Also for milk, beer and sea urchin.



This sounds even less exciting than a flea circus.