Oh man too many holidays at once. This Japan trip was actually a family holiday, where my mum wanted to visit a heap of different places. The trip was mainly based in Hokkaido, and I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy the trip or not since it wasn’t a food based trip, and I’ve never done a not-food-based-trip before. It turns out I loved it! It’s rare for my to have a life changing holiday, but this one was pretty incredible. Because I’m still sick of typing many words, this will just be mainly picture spam because I took a LOT of photos!

We started off in Tokyo, and here’s a coffee my brother fetched for me. It’s notable because it’s a warm can, and apparently it’s a single origin – Ethiopia Mokka. It didn’t taste terrible, just bland XD

I also traded my brother some more of my St Ali instant coffee for this Supreme Coffee instant coffee. I haven’t tried it yet though!

A trip to Life Size Cribe, and I had no idea that red beans and butter on toast was a thing XD My brother ordered this and it was pretty tasty! Maybe I’ll have to try making my own at some point!

Coffee with Mugi!!!

Lunch at Shake Shack. Yeah I know, I’ve just come from America. But it’s still tasty!

Haneda Airport, domestic terminal. Look they have a wasabi plant on display! And I finally got my hands on some saba sushi. This was my plane snack, and it’s just as I imagined! Good strong vinegar flavour to offset the really yummy fatty-fishiness!

The AirDo plane’s bear totally looks like a koala. Hello Kushiro!

Most of this trip simply involved eating at places that looked decent. This was a cute little place!

Oden and whale meat! Yay now I can say I’ve eaten a sentient creature >_>

So many pictures at a fish market in Kushiro. This ended up being my pick your own seafood bowl. Plus the sad looking crab on the side. All of this cost about 3200 yen. The crab was a bit disappointing because it was still partly frozen. The seafood bowl, on the other hand, was quite nice! I love getting fresh seafood here! I also ate some asparagus and pumpkin. Pumpkin here is totally different from the main types of pumpkin back in Aus! These ones are dense and creamy, like the texture of chestnuts! I had a hard time liking them because they were heavier than I expected, but still tasted good!

We had a hire car for the beginning of the trip, so we went and visited the national park and wetlands.

Yay I got to do some trainspotting by following my brother around! It’s actually a fun thing to do!

It’s hard to take photos when we’re driving twice as fast as the locals. But cows!! Cows everywhere!

There was a cutesy little shop called Poppotei that makes pretty ramen! Pork and seasonal vegetables. I love the colour in this and it tasted good too!

Lake Mashu is super pretty!

You can smell this place before you get here. Sulfur mountains!! This one was quite stinky!

No idea if people are randomly balancing rocks or some other sorcery is at work here…

Our hotel was at Lake Akan. A beautiful place, but watch out for the insane massive nasty mosquitoes that are everywhere!!!

Marimo island! This is where the marimo museum is! I remember hearing about marimos at work in Adelaide cause a friend was talking about it. Now I finally understand what they are!

The museum was small, but it had so many adorable little marimos! It even showed the life cycle of marimo.

There were touchable marimos at our hotel! They are a lot firmer than I thought, and not as fluffy. It’s like a short haired rock… kind of XD

On the road again, this time a stopover at Rausu. Look at this massive octopus tentacle! Also that shot has saturated the shadows on my hand :/

Another 3000 yen seafood bowl!!

Found some nesting seagulls on the rooftop opposite where we had lunch!

A waterfall that felt like it was in the middle of nowhere. Tried a few different shutter speeds for this, but I think I still favour fast shutters.

An abandonment that my brother wanted to explore.

Waited around for a train that didn’t come because “high temperatures” caused the JR lines to cancel. Instead, found some interesting bugs!

Sunset at Abashiri. My sensor is so dirty!

Set dinner at our hotel. I love the presentation! Grill your own beef, make your own noodle soup, some sashimi, crab, and an all you can eat section too!

Abashiri prison museum. I actually didn’t think much of this place when we got here, but wow. The more I walked through and read the information, I ended up really liking this place! It felt like so much more than just a prison. There was a farming section here, including stories about making pickles and cutting edge farming technology. The conditions were harsh, but the prisoners loved it here. It was interesting seeing the prison cells as well, ranging from the 3 to a cell to solitary confinement, and how different materials were used for cells, for different reasons. I didn’t take any pictures of this place, but I would love to visit again!

The drive to our next destination was super long, so we had a stopover at a random little stopover place. A simple, onion soup tasting ramen with the weirdest looking “fish stick” thing I’ve ever seen. At first I thought there was a chunk of bread in my ramen, but it’s actually a spongey thing meant to resemble fish stick!

I love seeing rice fields.

Blue Lake. The water is actually super blue, it’s a greeny blue and very different from the colour of the sky. This place is famous for these dead looking trees in the water? Not sure what it’s all about, but it’s pretty!

Look! A bumblebee! I can’t believe how big they are! They are sooooo adorable!

Finally a big-ish city, Asahikawa. I call it beer river, just cause XD. Time to try some street photography!

The station here has an interesting sculpture.

My brother alerted me to the presence of sakura mochi ice cream!!! Wooohooo!

A lot of the hotels we were staying at had dinner and/or breakfast included. It turns out I love burdock here! And there’s so much jelly. I love jelly! And almond tofu. There’s heaps of that too! And the little shishamo fish are everywhere – I had no idea they were all bursting with roe. I made sure to eat plenty since it’s hard to get back in Aus!

On the road again, so more rice fields. I’d love to visit these farms and do some rice planting one day – my brother says there are rice planting festivals that people can participate in!

This is the Ken and Mary tree. I actually have no idea who Ken and Mary are, but I think it’s cool to have a tree as a tourist attraction. This was quite adorable!

Then we headed to a flower farm. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite the right season to see them all in full bloom, but the place was still very picturesque, plus there were heaps of yubari melon goods here!

Yubari melon flavour “the moist stick” financier XD

Rice fields! Everywhere!

Another round of trainspotting. I actually had no idea what my brother was preparing for, so I put on my long lens since the railway track was all the way over there. Good thing, I managed to get a nice shot of the 1 car train!

Tomita farm! Full of flowers, and there’s a melon farm next door, but that was closed. It was fun exploring this place!

Someone even brought in their pet parrot to take selfies with XD

They sell lavender coffee here too. Not really sure it had that much lavender flavour, but it was made to order and nice to sip on and relax at the farm.

Also got a half-half of melon and lavender flavoured soft serve since that seems to be a specialty around here.

After leaving Tomita farm, we headed to a place my brother wanted to go to. Furano ramen, a tiny tiny shop in the middle of a tiny town that served cheese ramen. Apparently lots of people leave messages about the fantastic ramen here, which was awesome! This ramen was a tad spicy, but really nice! The toilet here is apparently also super old fashioned, but I didn’t feel like checking it out hahahaha. Definitely worth stopping by!

It was actually funny, even though I’m usually the one who gets asked, “how did you find out about this place?” this was the first time that I felt compelled to ask my brother how he found out about the place. It was kind of mystifying, even though I was pretty sure his answer is the same as the way I usually find out about my places. It was still weird being on the asking side instead of the answering side though!

Look! A fox!!! This was actually the third fox we saw, but the only one I managed to take a picture of. They seem used to being around cars and don’t panic when we pass them. Interesting!

Can you believe that these are ski fields in winter? Amazing.

I’ll end this post here, since now we’re in Sapporo. What is this bee doing? Well, I found this corpse at Tomita farm, and managed to have a plastic bag handy to keep it in. Why would I want a corpse? To pose it and take photos of course! However, keeping a dead bumblebee safe was an arduous task. I wanted to make a haiku about carrying the spirit of a bumblebee all across Japan, so that it could experience things that most bumblebees couldn’t. Except I never really got a chance to show it off. But it did travel all the way from Tomita farm to Hokodate! What an effort!