jigokudani aka hell valley simply awesome

after a good nite rest, my day started at 7am this morning. i first went for a hot bath and guess who i spotted heh heh ... by the time, we went to the breakfast hall everyone else had started feasting ! wow a bunch of early birds (-_-!) as we settled in our allocated seat, we realised that one of the breakfast set had already been eaten! we were then later told that someone from another group actually ate it .... i wondered why no one stopped him/her, probably busy eating ha ha ??? our breakfast was again sumptuous with fish, potato salad, porridge, pickles, egg, radish (abit too much for me in the morning).

after a full breakfast, it's great to head out for a stroll and we definitely had a good one at jigokudani aka hell valley. strolling thru the suphurous valley, we enjoyed the awesome view of the changing colors of autumn. the sun, the leaves, the wind, i wanna remember every bit of this stroll.














after tat, we proceed to the outdoor ainu museum - porotokotan. the ainu is the indigenous people of hokkaido with their own culture and language. the ainu settlement was moved and restored at the shores of Lake Poroto in 1965 forming this museum that preserve and exhibit the ainu's cultural assets. at the visitor entrance, we were greeted with an enormous statue of chief (right). till now, we still cant decide if he is carrying an umbrella or mop on his left hand hiakz hiakz ...

we also managed to catch the traditional ainu folk dance including the following:

1) mukkuri: ainu musical instrument mouth harp. the obasan performing this look abit cocky, but she is good ! the kind of sound that comes with such a simple instrument is amazing.

2) ifunke: lullaby

3) iyomante rimse: a ceremonial dance for sending bear's spirit back to heaven. at a certain part of the dance, they started singing "hon-sen, hon-sen, hon-sen" and i almost died of internal injury, preventing myself from laughing after jc started it. somehow it remind her of "blue-black" bruise (in hokkien).

after the performance, we toured around the museum briefly. it is too big a place to walk around completely with the given time. with tat, we were mainly at the resting place along the lake, the ainu dog and the bear cage.

nex come lunch *slurp* we went to a seafood market and ordered 2 scallop at 1000 yen each. the scallop sashimi is sooooooo big and yummy definitely worth the price (5 out of 5 stars). on top of this, we also had a seafood pot with crab, prawn, scallop and lotsa vege.

after the heavy lunch, we started our long journey to asahikawa. with ample time, we managed to visit otoyama sake brewing museum (jus before their closing time at 5pm) that contains many valuable items spanning 330 years of history and culture of sake brewing. after a long day, i can only recalled trying their award wining sake at 150 yen and rice crackers (tat were already sold-out).

our hotel stay was at hotel crescent asahikawa which is a walking distance from the asahikawa shopping street. dinner was my favourite - ramen !!! oishi, i love it !!! with scallop (nope i m not sick of it yet), char-siew, tamago, and even side dish - gyoza. after dinner was free & easy and of course being us, we got lost again walking in a completely opposite direction away from the shopping street heh heh we almost bump into our 'soy sauce' again after saying bye bye to her 5 mins ago in the ramen shop. asahikawa shopping street is packed with shopping malls, but unfortunately i did not recalled much about them other than taking off and putting on my coat. the malls are simply too stuffy and the streets are simply too cold. surprisingly not only does the days seem shorter in hokkaido, even their malls close earlier at around 8pm. we only found 2 exceptions:

1) a busker singer who was singing out in the cold - strong vocal

2) convenient store lawson

so with nothing much left open thereafter, hotel sweet hotel ...