shuigao

!! Warning !! This post shouldn't be read on an empty stomach!!!

Full write-up including more photos, locations, prices, etc are on my blog.

1. Genghis Khan or Jingisukan (ジンギスカン)
➡ Lamb and Mutton charcoal-grilled on a cast iron dome



2. Butter Corn Ramen (バターコーンらーめん)
➡ Soupy Noodles with corn and a knob of butter



3. Kaisen Don (海鮮丼)
➡ Assorted fresh, raw seafood on a bed of warm steamed rice



4. Uni Donburi (うに丼)
➡ This Sea Urchin kaisendon deserves a category of its own



5. Soup Curry (スープカレー)
➡ Soup + Curry = Soup Curry



6. In-room Kaiseki (懐石)
➡ Traditional Japanese multi-course dinner served in the comfort of your room



7. Crab Cuisine Dinner (かに料理)
➡ Snow Crab, Hairy Crab and King Crab deliciousness



8. Yakiniku (焼肉)
➡ Assorted cuts of charcoal-grilled beef

too2early

Wow, it's time to start planning a trip soon.

What a generous serving of uni.

rittenhousesq

My guess would be that the people arrested for loitering in the transit area were not headed to the Private Room for dinner! I bet you would have been fine!

shuigao

During one of our visits to the mitsukoshi depachika in Odori/Sapporo, we picked up a bunch of Shine Muscat grapes -- these are terrific! Large, firm, juicy, seedless, and have an ever so slight flowery fragrant aftertaste.



After Shiroi Koibito Park, we drove the ~30mins to Otaru to stay the night at Grand Park Otaru, which was a surprisingly reasonable us$217.70 for 2 nights, plus „1,000/night for parking. Room and bathroom were very spacious, and view out the window wasn't half bad. Sadly we didn't get a non-smoking room so this one was one of those crappy 'we deodorize every day' ones.





The downside of staying in Otaru overnight (vs Sapporo)? Nothing much to see. We made do with some more depachika browsing at the AEON mall, then headed to gyu-kaku for the perfect cold & rainy day meal: charcoal grilled beef cuts!

psychoandy

Great TR! Good info on the amenity kit/sleeper suit on SQ 12. I do enjoy the emphasis on foods/destinations/attractions for Japan; while this site is obviously frequent flyer oriented it's nice to see well rounded reports with actual tourism and not just being on the fly-fly.

I'm actually planning a Tokyo trip...in addition to your excellent blog, would you be able to share any resources that you used to plan your trip? Normally I plan vacations by reading Chowhound boards and the foodie blogosphere, but Chowhound post-reno is not very helpful.

Finally, don't let the haters get you down...if there was a SQ Private Room/The Wing style lounge in BOS, I'd be checking into my flights at T-24.

shuigao

So after a night in the not-quite-deodorized hotel room (that's one thing I dislike about Japan. Many hotels have a very high proportion of smoking rooms and so you aren't always guaranteed a non-smoking one), the next morning it's time to explore the town of Otaru!

Starting, of course, with the Otaru Canal. Perhaps it's cos of the dreadful weather (windy, rainy, cloudy, wet, cold), but this was honestly one of the most underwhelming, not at all scenic 'attractions' of our trip.



No matter, we head then to the Sakaimichi Main Street - lined by dozens of shops with a curious mishmash of European and Japanese-influenced façades.



Shopping-wise, Otaru's known for music boxes (there's even a music box museum, which in true Japanese style isn't a museum at all), and glassware. We weren't really interested in music boxes so we skipped, but we did spend a lot of time in the shops selling all sorts of cute glass miniatures!



After buying „5,000 or so of the glass miniatures to take home & display somewhere, we head over to LeTAO to get our cheesecake on!

LeTAO has 3 or 4 shops in the area - we head to LeTAO PATHOS, which is the newest & biggest.



On the eat-in menu: Hokkaido soft serve ice cream (always delicious), and LeTAO's signature 'double fromage' no-bake mascarpone cheese cake. Unlike other Western-style cheesecakes, the Japanese ones tend to be very light and fluffy.



We also bought a whole Chocolate Double - which I like more than the normal, plain cake



We rounded up our 1/2 day in Otaru with a cheap lunch cafe - saw lots and lots of students eating inside, so ... the food had to be cheap and good, right?



That was our thinking, anyway. Food wasn't too bad for a cafe that does 'everything' - I mean ... hot plate hamburg steak and ikura don from the same kitchen?



After lunch we paid the „2,000 parking fee (4 hours parking at „500/hour) and headed West!

DanielW

Some tasty eats, shuigao. Looks like Japan is a relative bargain now with the weak yen too.

shuigao

$33 for that bowl, if I remember correctly it said '80 grams' on the menu.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. They were arrested cos they bought a flight, checked in to go ambush an arriving celebrity in the transit areas, then exit and go home (i.e. no intention to fly whatsoever).

I also think you're right that I would've probably been fine, but I guess I chickened out in the end as it was the start of our vacation and we didn't want to risk anything untoward happening.

Thanks for the support! I tend to use http://www.japan-guide.com/ exclusively for the initial planning - to see which attractions I'd be interested in - craft a skeleton itinerary then go on forums to ask for critiques.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/japan-509/

I think Japan's reputation for being super expensive is a little overblown. Of course if you want luxury there's tons of $1k a night hotels and $300 dinners, but on the other end of the spectrum there are also tons of $70-$80 nice business hotels, and $5-$7 meals.

Maybe it's cos FT tends to attract the more luxury crowd? *shrug*

arlflyer

The reputation definitely exists even outside of FT. The exchange rate definitely plays into it, I'd think - 5 years ago it was ~85 JPY/USD and now we are sitting at 120. Even having done my research I was very pleasantly surprised at the costs the first time I visited Japan - and the Yen has dropped probably another 20% even since then.

I think part of it also is that, at least here from a US perspective, people compare to what they are accustomed to in the US - big apartments/hotels, taking taxis or driving/parking, buying the same US brands they are used to, eating huge portions of meat. And that kind of lifestyle would be expensive. But it is also not the norm, and so it is not a reasonable comparison.

Aventine

Too bad they didn't have the seasonal green tea cheesecake at Letao. That stuff is what dreams are what out of. LOVE IT.

shuigao

OK, enough of cities for a while, let's head to the countryside! I haven't mentioned it in earlier posts, but the last few days have been absolutely sh*t for weather - cloudy, rainy, windy, wet. Windy. Destroyer-of-umbrellas-type winds. So we take a drive to Cape Kamui with fingers crossed hoping the weather gives us a break.



The drive is quite pleasant, with windy roads alternating between coastal drives and tunnels; but with maddening 40-50 km/h (25-31 mph) speed limits.



Eventually we reach the parking lot, where there are more vending machines than there are buildings. Weather's still gloomy but at least no rains, so we're lucky today!



Or not. The pathway to the lighthouse is closed due to strong winds, grrrrr.



By lighthouse, we mean this lighthouse. Would've been nice to be able to hike there and see what the view's like. Ah well, view isn't half bad from shore, though.




Having come all this way, we stick around for a romantic sunset before heading back to Otaru.




No dinner photos ... we were too lazy to go search for an actual restaurant in town, so we walked to the Aeon Shopping Mall attached to the hotel lobby ... and I'm ashamed to say we had Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner.

shuigao

After two nights in Otaru, it's time to hit the road again! We check out and set out on our planned 300km drive to Sounkyo Onsen; with stops at Furano and Biei. Along the way as we head further North and at a higher elevation, we can see glimpses of yellow and orange peeking out from the green:




Upon arrival at Furano (town) there's a nice flower field. Since it's October, peak lavender season is passed but there are still a lot of other flowers.



Then just outside Farm Tomita, there is a melon-themed place called Tomita Melon House; selling all sorts of melon stuff, liked sliced melon, melon ice cream, melon pan with melon cream, etc. It's a melon wonderland!




Inside Farm Tomita, we view some flowers, buy some lavender-themed souvenirs (lavender essential oils, lavender perfume), and eat lavender soft serve ice cream. Oh, and view more flowers, with majestic snow-capped mountains in the background.

shuigao

After Furano, we went in search of more scenic views around the area - starting from the nearby Blue Pond. Along the way saw this nice sunflower field so we stopped to take a photo.



This pond apparently gained popularity when one photo of it was used as dunno which version of Mac OS wallpaper. The water is supposed to be light blue / milky blue but in our visit it really looked more like green. Algae green.




Then it's onward to exploring the hills around Biei. Thanks to the agriculture and hilly area there are LOTS of views as pretty as this one:



Also ... this part is a bit strange to me but there are a bunch of famous 'trees' around the area and a touristy thing to do is to drive around and hunt down these trees and take photos. Erm ... yeah. First up is the 'mild seven tree' (famous because it apparently appeared in a cigarette commercial years ago).



And also the 'mother & son tree' (famous because ... I honestly don't know). There's a whole bunch of other trees around but as it's already sunset and we still have a 90km drive on 50km/h speed limit roads ahead of us ... we leave Biei and head to Sounkyo onsen where we'll spend the next two nights.



Our hotel of choice: Choyo Resort Hotel, non-smoking Japanese-style room with breakfast & buffet dinner @ „30,350/night.



Buffet was just so-so. Other than free flow snow crab legs, other food only just 'edible' (yes, really none of the buffet items were really any better than japanese food you can find in other countries).

shuigao

We arrived at the hotel only after sunset, so we had no idea what it really looked like. So we only managed to snap this photo the next day. If you notice, the 'back' of the hotel faces a hill.



Turns out we were lucky enough to get a hill-facing room so we had this amazing view out the window! There's a small stream running between the hotel and the cliff so it was quite serene to sit at the window drinking hot green tea.



We then walked (~5 mins) to the Sounkyo Onsen town. It's a small street with maybe a dozen shops (mostly selling ramen, tonkatsu curry rice, etc).



Some nice autumn colours to be found.



There isn't really much to do in the town (for now), so we pay „1,950 for a round trip cable car journey up to the "5th station."

5th station? In Japan, the numbering doesn't designate the number of stations, but rather how high up the mountain the station is. So in this case "5th station" means "roughly halfway up."



At the 5th station there are a bunch of pleasant walking trails to various viewing spots ... and a „600 (return journey) ski/chair lift up to the "7th station." In winter this is a pretty popular ski/snowboard destination.



Up on the 7th station, there's not much to do. There's a small hut (serving some basic hot food, coffee and hot chocolate), and a few areas where kids can play with snow as both their parents take photos/videos:



We had initially planned to take the 60-90minute hike up to the summit of Mt. Kurodake; but as it turns out we were woefully underprepared. The cold was tolerable with proper jacket and gloves but our footwear - wife wearing boots, myself wearing onizuka tigers - had hardly any grip on the snow. So we hiked up for about 5 minutes and said ok screw it, a broken leg isn't worth it, and turned back.



So after some more sightseeing we headed down back to the Onsen town for some extremely wonderful hot spring baths!

offerendum

Thanks for sharing! This Region is absolutely new to me