BACKK! :D haha. hmm i really dont know where to begin. too many things to say alr. lol. but basically i enjoyed this trip alot, especially the first few days in japan. learned quite alot about japan from this trip. and we got to see a night of snowing :D my first time seeing it. so happy lol. and what i like about japan is their weather (four seasons, who won't like it? lol), their cleanliness (singapore is relatively clean as well but the difference is that they dont have that many dustbins around like us. in fact it's quite difficult to find a dustbin and yet you can hardly see any litter on the ground. and it's like that everywhere. really amazing man) and their people (they're super warm and polite and friendly i tell you. you look at them and they'll just smile at you even though they dont know you. some will even say konichiwa to you. haha. oh and their service standard is excellent. you buy or dont buy anything from them, they'll just bow to you and say thank you so many times. haha we should really learn from them.) haha. my brother and i kept saying we wanna migrate there after the five days. but its almost impossible lah lol. their standard of living is high but their cost of living is high too. the stuff are so expensive. plus the yen appreciated quite alot. so it's like we're burning our pockets everytime we buy something. lol. and the japanese are really workaholics. at nine or ten o'clock at night, you can still see people holding briefcases walking around. i think the situation is worse in tokyo. lol. and you need to learn how to speak jap fluently to survive there too. lol. our tour guide is a singaporean but she'll be in japan working most of the time. she told us she took four years to learn jap plus many years of experience as a jap tour guide before she can speak so fluent jap. haha people like me always learn things halfway, definitely cmi one. lol. hmms okay shall start from the very first day. cant really remember everything in detail though but i'll try to by looking at all the pictures we took as a reference. haha. WARNING: this is gonna be a really long post as im gonna say almost everything that we did there cos i wanna keep it as a memory. so if you wanna fall asleep you can read on. HAHA.
DAY ONE. it's not really counted as a day cos we arrived at hokkaido at around 4 plus pm and the sky's already turning dark. so we checked into the hotel immediately. i underestimated the temperature there. it was so cold when we stepped out of the airport to wait for our bus. i think i wore one of the least there. my brother had like five or six sets of tops over him while i only had three including my winter jacket. as a result my skin is peeling quite badly now especially on my hands. like got some skin disease liddat. lol. anyway, i started to feel airsick on the plane from taipei to hokkaido. and i wasted the tray of food they served to us. i barely touched it at all. lol super waste. it got worse during the bus journey to the hotel. finally when we reached the hotel, i couldnt stand it anymore. went to the toilet and vomitted quite badly. haha what a bad first day. but i was quite surprised at their toilet. the cubicle to be exact. it's so clean that it doesn't feel like a public toilet at all. and there are a few functions on the toilet bowl as well. which i dont think we can find it here in sg lol. there's this function where you can wash your butt after doing your business. haha quite interesting but people like me dont know how to use it properly so i didnt use that function at all. the first time i tried i screamed cos there's like a sudden stream of water shooting out and it's so itchy and... haha shall not elaborate further. oh yes and i think they installed a heater at the bottom of the toilet bowl plate so that when we sit on it, it makes us feel warmer and better. HAHA. but its really comfortable lah. after vomitting i felt so much better. so we decided to try the suana. or wen quan in chinese. LOL i still cant imagine that day when we first stepped into the room. the first thing me and my mum saw were bare bodies, walking around. i didnt know they were so 'open'. haha. we were stunned there for a few secs, wondering if we should go in anot. after plucking up much courage, we finally took off our clothes damn slowly. i was slower than my mum. haha. i just couldnt imagine myself being totally naked in front of so many people! after taking off everything, i quickly took a tower to cover myself. HAHA it was so embarrassing okay. then you will keep having the feeling that all of them are looking at you but actually we are the ones looking at them. LOL. in fact they dont even care about you at all. then we went to another room which is connected to this changing room. and we saw even more naked women inside. haha. the feeling's really uneasy at first. but we got used to it as we went there again a few more times. there's this rule where you have to bathe once first before going into the water. and you must tie up your hair before going in too. woah they provided alot of bathing stuff for us lah. shampoo, conditioner, body wash, scrub, stool, almost everything you need. and there are alot of showerheads available and the water is quite powerful too. so you just choose one of the showerheads, sit on the stool in front of the mirror and bathe. and we found that it's actually quite relaxing and comfortable to bathe there. so from then on we never used the toilet in our hotel room to bathe. we just come down to the suana area to bathe everytime. haha. then after bathing, it's time to step into the pool. i screamed when i put my first foot into it. cos the water's super hot okay. it's like above forty degrees celsius -__- my mum went into it quite easily. while i was still there struggling to put my other foot in. haha and i bet those people around were laughing at me. i think it took me almost three minutes or so to dip my entire body into it. HAHA so dumb hor. people just go into it in less than 10 secs while i need 3 mins -___- haha. it was quite comfortable at first and you can float quite easily too. lol. but after awhile i got a headache cos it was too overwhelming. my brother was worse. his nose bled. the tour guide also warned us that we can only stay in it for at most ten mins. if not your blood pressure will increase too much. haha. after we came out, we went to bathe for another time. and hurry rushed back to put on our clothes. lol. dinner that night was a buffet. the crab is super delicious i tell you. i usually dont like to eat crabs but this one i really liked it alot. didnt really eat anything raw though. haha. after dinner we went outside of the hotel to take a few pictures. must enjoy the snow before it stops. so sad we only get to see it snowing once. lol. then we went back to our comfy tatami-s to sleep :D it's so comfortable that i fell asleep immediately when i lied down. haha.
DAY TWO. we went to the suana again to pao and bathe. then was breakfast. couldnt really rmb what we had though. haha. then it was a rather long bus journey to our next destination. which is the greenhouse thingy to see the flowers if im not wrong. ehh i think it was lavender or smth. it was so funny. most of us went into the greenhouse for less than three mins then we came out alr. cos the snow and the scene around is just too beautiful. the snow was so thick that our shoes sinked into it. took quite alot of pictures with the snow. my bro and i then tried to make snowballs and throw at each other. the snow is so fluffy and soft and i just wanna lie on it forever. LOL. then it was lunch. lol it's like we only visited one place and it's lunchtime alr. cos each journey is so long. some even stretched to three and a half hours or so -__- we'll all just sleep in the bus or listen to music. went to the zoo in the afternoon. haha the main attraction was the polar bear. hehe it's so cute! we stood there and watched it move around and swim for quite long. then we went to see the other animals. i really wonder how these animals can survive in such a cold weather. it was about 1.7 degrees celsius at that time. LOL i embarrassed myself at the tiger's cage there. cos i was trying to spot the tigers but didnt realise that there's one right in front of me and staring so fiercely at me somemore. and it's really damn close to me k. then i thought about the white tiger incident and jumped back and screamed immediately. then my mum and bro and the other tourists around were laughing at me zzz. so dumb haha. stupid tiger... another interesting attraction is the penguins! at first sight i thought they were fake penguins cos there were so many and they just stood there and didnt move at all. until i realise that they actually did move if you take a closer look at them. the baby penguins are so cute! so many of them somemore. hahaha. then it was dinner time and checked into the second hotel after that. went to the suana as usual. this time we were not as afraid anymore. we even blew our hair, applied cream and lotion whatever in the dressing room. there are so many stuff provided for us at the dressing table. sterilised combs, hairdryer, the kose brand of skin and face lotion, hand soap, basins for us to wash our hands etc. the only thing you have to bring down is your makeup kit or your own lotion if you dont wanna use theirs. lol.
DAY THREE. woah this is getting tiring. i spent almost three hours typing the above. lol. anyway this day is the most fun and exciting one! cos we get to go to the snow mountain to play with snow! before that we visited two mini waterfalls. there's no water falling cos it already froze in such a cold weather. the temperature there was abit minus seven degrees celsius can! that was when my lips started to crack quite badly and my hands start to develop this skin disease thingy. haha. everyone was complaining that they were gonna freeze. so we hurry took some pictures and got on the bus to the snow mountain! ehh i dunno whats the exact name in english though. i just did a direct translation from the chinese words. haha. and we took more pictures in the snow again! :D the snow there is slightly different from the usual one we see beside the roads. it's softer and whiter and more fluffy! hahaha. afterwhich we sat a mega cable car to the top of the mountain! there we climbed up a few storeys to the viewing gallery. lol the steps were so many and steep and all the aunties started complaining. haha. the view is fantastic above! took quite alot of pictures there. then we went down to play some 'snowboarding' where we sit on this board thingy and slide down a small distance. haha. but it doesnt go fast enough so its not really that exciting. and its funny to see those aunties playing with it too. then they keep screaming and dont dare to slide down. haha! sadly we only spent like 35mins there and we had to move on to our next destination already, which is our lunch -__- lol. we had steamboat :D they gave us a huge plate of food to cook with like NINE pieces of salmon -_- the japs like to eat salmon and scallop alot. almost every meal we will confirm have salmon and scallop. and each piece of salmon is so huge. i ate one and a half pieces and almost puked already. still have to eat the other stuff. man my stomach almost burst can. lol. after that we went to this native place. uhm it was quite boring actually. haha. except for maybe the performance which was quite an eye-opener. i liked the part where they sang and danced in a circle and they called a few people from the audience to go up to dance too. the little boy who went up was so cute! haha. oh then after the show, we went out to take a few pictures. then this boy, which i believe is a singaporean, started singing "underwear, underwear, underwear" while walking past us. then my bro and i started laughing. hahaha. cos the song which the performers sang goes smth like "orh-neh, orh-neh, orh-neh" then he went to change it to 'underwear' -___- hahaha stupid. our last stop was the HELL VALLEY. haha. even before you reach there, you can alr smell the strong and pungent sulphur gas coming from the ground. cos it's a suana area. walao it stinks can. then the tour guide still brought us further in. but it was already quite dark by then. cant really see anything properly. can only like see smoke coming from some parts of the ground and smell the damn sulphur. haha. then we checked into our third and last suana hotel. and tried on the last set of suana robe. this hotel has the biggest room but the food at the restaurant sucks! so little variety plus its not very nice also.
DAY FOUR. i think we had the most number of stops that day. we went to a beer factory first, called Asahi. we were given samples of beer to try out. lol actually the legal age to drink beer in japan is twenty yrs old. previously our tour guide kitty told the children in our tour group to not drink it but all of us still drank secretly in the end. haha. anyway im sure i can pass off as a 20++ yrs old person. kitty still asked me if my mum is really my mum or not. and shes not the only one who asked me that ques before loh. haha yala yala i know i very old ah ma and my mum very young loh. LOL. anyway, we then proceeded to this ramen house to eat ramen! :D you should see the way they prepare the ramen. and its supperrrrr delicious! couldnt finish everything cos its such a big bowl. and its quite expensive too. i think i'll eat it only when im super hungry. then we went to shop along LI XIAO LU 1-7. nothing much to buy. or cos they were too expensive thats why most of us were unwilling to buy. haha. then we went to another shopping area to shop again. didnt buy anything again cos its really too expensive. thats where my mum got rather pissed off cos she thinks we are given too much time on shopping and so little time on visiting the tourist attractions. then there were two other families who were quite unhappy too. lol o.O i dont mind anything actually. haha. then we went to this palace-like place where we get to wash our bad luck away and pray for the coming year. then each of us paid i think 100 yen to cou a qian. you know its like what people normally do in temples. they shake this bottle of qians until one stick drop out. i got this qian which is xiao ji. but the things written in it are mostly negative leh. so sad. then we can tie it up at the place if we get a lousy qian. acutally i wanted to tie it up there alr but my mum called me to keep it cos at least a xiao ji is better than nothing. lols. then our last stop was the white chocolate factory! the bai se lian ren chocolate biscuit, which i love to eat so much. haha. woah the entire place is really not what i had expected. it doesnt look like a factory at all. it looks like a castle or like a toy factory. took many pictures there. the boss also has many of his own collections like those tea sets and whatever and they were all put on display. its quite a cool factory. haha if i get to work there then everyday i can eat the chocolate biscuits alr wahahahaha. but these chocolate biscuits dont come cheap at all. we counted and it costs about 1 sing dollar per biscuit -_- so ex can. so you can imagine how much they can earn. dinner was BARBEQUE! that was where we ate the famous Kobe beef. we paid like almost S$120 dollars for a piece of it which is cut into a few smaller pieces. then we ordered it to be 60% cooked. lol. cos it was so expensive, we ate each piece so slowly that the taste was almost lost in our mouth. haha. and they even showed us the birth certificate of the kobe cow to verify that the beef is genuine. so ridiculous can. kitty also said that the kobe cow is treated like some king. they let it listen to music, eat the top graded grass, let it live in an almost perfect environment blah blah. but its really nice lah. its a taste which you'll never forget. but my mum was rather unhappy about it cos we kept bugging her to buy the beef then in the end it doesnt seem worth it at all. in fact it is really not worth it. but nvm at least it's a once in lifetime thing. lol. cos of this beef, we were left with so much less money to spend on other stuff. checked into the hotel and my brother fell asleep immediately cos he got sick. then i dragged my mum to go out walk walk with me. haha. this hotel is in the city area. so it's quite rowdy everywhere. the lightings and the roads are so similar to that of orchard road. haha. didnt buy anything much though. actually we only bought a red bean pancake and drinks. haha. japan is famous for its red bean. it tastes so much better than ours here. and the cashier was damn polite and all. he kept smiling to us and kept saying thank you so many times. lol. really satisfied with their service there.
DAY FIVE. our last day in japan! :\ went to visit a canal first. that was where we took our tour photo. lol like finally. later i shall give a description on our tour group. they're really fun and funny people. haha. then we went to the music box factory. my mum so gi guai lo. of all the cute and pretty music boxes, she went to buy this music box that looks like a clock -_- so common and not special. lol. then we went to a tea house where we each get to choose different designs of cups to bring back. haha i chose the purple hello kitty cup. my brother wanted to choose that at first then i call him gay so he chose another one instead. then i took this cup. HAHAHA evil. anyway their hello kitty is cuter lo. purple colour one. and its purple cos it follows the colour of the lavender flower, which i believe is the symbolic thing in hokkaido. those shampoo and soap provided in the suana earlier are all made with the lavender. shopped around and bought some keychains. last minute shopping lol. afterwhich our final final destination is the airport :\ was abit reluctant to leave cos i fell in love with japan alr. HAHA. wonder when will i be there again. i still wanna learn more about their culture and their people. JAPAN LOVEEE :) and so we boarded the plane to taiwan. oh wait their bag inspection is so strict can. my darlie toothpaste and clean&clear facial wash was thrown away by them as a result! :( sobs sobs still left alot kk. then another of our tour mate had to throw away 4 out of 5 of her perfume bottles. haha even worse than us.
Reached taipei at about 7pm. the flight from hokkaido to taipei was like more than one hour longer than the flight from taipei to hokkaido. weird. then there we met our new tour guide. okay he gave us such a bad first impression. his response to our questions seems somewhat slow and he speaks damn softly until my mum couldnt stand it so she shouted from behind and asked him to speak louder. haha. then on the bus he didnt do any self-introduction and just started talking about the history of taiwan -__- and he speaks with such chim words that annoyed some of our tour mates cos they were not very chinese-pro. in fact almost all except the four aunties came from english speaking family. only halfway through then he introduced himself under the query of one of our tour mates. he calls himself Mr. Brawn?? or Mr. Coffee. zzz. then there was one part which was very funny. cos he was trying to tell us his phone number, so we all took out our phones and papers to note down. but before that he kept crapping about dunno what thing until one of our tour mates got fed up and said KUAI DIAN JIANG LA. then all those around her started laughing. haha. oh and one main thing is that we started to compare taiwan with japan. the traffic, the environment, the people are all different. in taipei their traffic is quite messy. my mum says you have to have excellent driving skills before you can drive on the roads. thats why my aunt doesnt dare to drive from taichung to taipei cos she's afraid of the traffic. and there are honking sounds everywhere. in japan you can hardly hear any honking sounds. their drivers are more patient and more tolerating than those in taipei. and for the few times we sat in a taxi, the driver was like taking us on a rollercoaster ride. he kept accelerating and braking and weaving in and out. so dangerous can tsk tsk. but the good thing about taiwan is that the stuff are much cheaper! and their food is like delicous. our first stop was at shilin night market. dashed in for the TIAN BU LA, OUA MEE SUA and SMELLY TOFU! :) and queued so long for the ZHA JI PAI. i dunno what issit called in english. the queue there is never short. then we quickly went to the other side of shilin and started shopping! the time given to us is really not enough for us to walk the whole of shilin. we were like rushing to buy stuff. i bought this pair of puma sneakers in a hurry. still dunno if i really like it anot. haha. then our time is up and we rushed back to the meeting point. we were one of the latest lol. reached the hotel at 10 plus pm and started repacking our stuff. slept at almost 1am. zz abit we slept at around 9-10pm in japan but we sleep so late here. haha. partly because the tv channels are more and finally in a language which we can understand. lol. my brother and i keep going to the star movies channel or ESPN. oh and there's channelnewsasia too. haha! decided to watch abit cos i feel so isolated from the world of news. LOL.
The next day we didnt follow our tour group to the tourist attractions. we instead went back ourselves to visit our grandparents. haha grandpa is still as cute as ever. he woke up so early in the morning and prepared himself to welcome us alr. and we made him wait a few hours for us cos we woke up late -_- lol. afterwhich we took a bus to XI MEN DING to shop again! our first stop was at AY-CHUNG MIAN XIAN. omg that place is always full of people standing around the shop and enjoying the ever mouth-watering MEE SUA. haha. after that shopped around for awhile before our first uncle came and fetched us to taipei 101 to take a few pictures. then he brought us inside and treated us to the Movenpick ice cream! omg the first ice cream dish that he chose for us already costs like ten sing dollars and he still bought one each for me and my bro. very scary. my mum tells me that he spends money quite lavishly. and then he always wants to bring us to those high-class restaurants until my mum kept telling and nagging at him to not spend such wasteful money. anyway it's really very nice of him to leave halfway during working hours and bring us around :) and his car is like luxurious can. BMW dunno what series one. when we sat in it we can really compare it with our lao pok Nissan Ex-Saloon. HAHA. then he dropped us at WU FEN PU to shop further! this place has become a must-go tourist attraction for singaporeans alr. lol. there sells mostly ladies' fashion clothes and they say even stephanie sun has gone there to shop before. lol. and we even met our tour group there too. then one of them was complaining to my mum about the tour guide again. lol. went to another night market nearby to eat and to shop even further. this was when we bought most of our stuff. the day ended with us feeling so drained that i almost didnt want to help my poor mum repack the luggage. lol.
The last day of our holiday trip started off with meeting our aunt and first uncle at our grandma's house. afterwhich they brought us to eat again! at this mountain which was supposedly a dead volcano, called YANG MING SHAN. he drove us to a restaurant which was situated at almost the peak of the mountain. the scenery there is beautiful. it's like you can almost see the whole of taipei city plus the taipei 101 sticking out somewhere. lol. and again the restaurant doesnt come cheap too. lol my uncle again. but the food they ordered is really very yummy! :) omg i enjoyed the dessert the most. it's smth like a fried mantou and you can dip into condensed milk to eat. DAMN NICE i tell you! then we sat there for quite long. my mum, aunt and first uncle were chatting while my bro and i just sat there and listened to them. lol their convo very interesting and humorous one. cos they will keep bickering at each other. haha. then we were brought to the mouth of the dead volcano. and it's emitting so much sulphur gas again -_- super stinky. and it's super cold and windy there until we practically ran back to the car after taking pictures. finally our last stop is to eat BING! my brother ordered this snow flakes icey thingy called XUE HUA and it's damn nice i tell you@@@ heard amk hub sells it too. shall go there and eat again someday! :D haha. finally we were brought back to the hotel where we met up with the rest of the tour mates. and we boarded the bus to the airport. and back to SINGAPORE :D on the plane i managed to watch the whole of the Cape No. 7 movie. haha it was quite nice even though i dont understand some of their jokes. lol cos they all spoke in hokkien. the soundtrack is nice. and i like the jap female lead! her hairstyle damn nice haha. the entire trip ended off with a happy note. so basically i enjoyed myself alot for the past week. going on a tour is such a good way to relax. shall earn more money so that i can go to more exotic places in future! :D and this brings me to the end of my post. OMG guess how many words now.. 4879 words and still counting. HAHA. i think i broke the record on my taiwan trip the other time.
Anyway, sorry if i bored you in this tremendously long post and i've decided to not describe our tour group alr cos im lazy to type further. haha. i wanna watch RED CLIFF now. the DVD is staring at me right now on the table. hahaha! yesterday i abit chiong five episodes of LITTLE NYONYA on the com until about 2am. LOL. it's getting nicer you know and jeanette can finally speak in the show. LOL. okay off i go tata! ~~~
oh yes paiseh im lazy to upload the photos here. too many alr. if wanna see can go facebook :D wahaha.
