Showing posts with label yakumo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yakumo. Show all posts

Sunday, October 6, 2019

Lake Toya, Hokkaido Trip (Day 9)

19th May 2019, Sunday

Sunday Flea Market
Today we were leaving Hakodate and going to the next destination, Lake Toya. We woke up early and packed our bags. My friend also cooked some of the sausages we bought yesterday as our breakfast. After we were done with everything, we checked out from the hotel. However, we loaded our luggage onto the car and walked back to Lucky Pierrot and Misuzu Coffee cafe to have our last meal in Hakodate. This time, we walked past a Sunday flea market where there were people selling off their own stuffs for a cheap price. I bought a Mickey Mouse towel from one of the stalls for 50 yen and it looked new. Also, it was made in Japan.

Lucky Pierrot Clown

Curry Rice
 After that, we continued walking to Lucky Pierrot place but it was not opened for business yet. There was already a short queue outside the entrance, so we just queued and waited for the store to open. Everyone looked so excited when the store opened. After some while, there was a elderly couple came in the store and the elderly man kept thanking everyone in the queue. Then we saw them walked into the store and the elderly lady walked into the counter and to the kitchen. It looked like she was giving her thanks to the staffs for their hard work. When the couple left the shop, they still gave their thanks to us and the people queuing. When it was our turn to order, we ordered their chinese chicken curry rice and the chinese chicken burger. The curry rice was yummy too.

Misuzu Coffee
Musical Concert @ Yakumo
After the breakfast, we walked to Misuzu Coffee cafe to get their coffee and cake to go. After buying, we walked back to the hotel to collect the car. Then we drove further in front to have the petrol pumped. It was my first time to pump petrol, so we were trying to figure what we suppose to do....hahaa..it was a self-serviced petrol station. It appeared the petrol was pumped into the car based on the options you chose on the machine. So we tried with one of the options first to test and then continued to pump slightly more. After that, my friend took the receipts and went to the office to make the payment. It wasn't full after the pumping but we guessed it should be enough for the next few days. Once done, we drove out on the road to Lake Toya. We even stopped by the same stop and ended up buying small packets of uncooked rice and some snacks before we continued on the road. There was even a music concert held there and there were more people compared to the previous time we came.

Beds in living room

Mini Jacuzzi tub
It took us around 3 hours to reach Toya area and we were surprised to find the hotel which we were staying was soooo far away from the town centre. Nevertheless, we managed to find the hotel with not much problem. The only problem i had was i was not able to park the car into the hotel's parking lot in the reserve way. Even i tried to drive in the car in, i ended up scratching the car on the left side (quite bad scratch though but we didn't really thought of reporting it to the car rental company as it wasn't really a serious accident. That was where i was wrong when i returned the car on the last day). In the end, i had to give up and parked the car in the open on the side. After that, we unloaded our luggage and went into the hotel for check-in. We were brought to our room by the hotel staff. Once we entered our room, we were blown away by the view from the glass window. We could see the whole view of Lake Toya and the town centre behind it. The next best thing was the room had a mini Jacuzzi tub. The toilet itself was as big as a room size. There were so much space in the living room and toilet.

Lake Toya giant photo frame

Foot-bath

Corn Soup

Hamburger steak

Pork Cutlet with Rice
We rested for some time before we drove out to the town center. We tried to navigate to the town information building in the town center on the car's gps and we drove to the place. Luckily there was available parking lots there where we could park our car. Then we walked down to the lake to explore. There were ducks boat where you can rent out into the lake but it was late and was closed for the day. We also found a foot-bath while walking the lake, so we decided to go and had a nice foot bath. We had our foot soaked for about 20 mins and decided to look for a nice dinning place. We decided to have our dinner at Boyotei, a western style restaurant where they were famous for their hamburger steak. The place was very cosy and we had a table further inside. We ordered their famous hamburger steak and pork cutlet rice set. The pork cutlet rice set came with a corn soup an and a drink. The pork cutlet was very tender and the rice was nice. My friend had the steak and it was yummy too.

Cruise ship

Our cruise boarding tickets

Interior of the ship
Night view from the lake
After the nice dinner, we walked back to the lake and booked a cruise ride where we can see the fireworks from the sea. We waited for the cruise to dock and headed out at the specified time. We bought the tickets for 8pm cruise. The cruise boat was very huge and looked very wonderland. It looked some time before we headed out deep in the lake and waited for the fireworks to start. There were two speedboats speeding left and right the lake and the fireworks were lighted. The fireworks performance lasted about 20 mins and it was lighted from right to left. It was quite nice but the sound of the fireworks was very loud as it exploded in front of us. Anyway, this was one item we won't want to miss as the fireworks performance was only available during summer period. When the show ended, we were brought to the pier and we walked with fast pace to the car as it was super cold. After that, we drove back to the hotel slowly as the road was quite dim. But we reached the hotel safe and sound where we had our turns in the jacuzzi tub....hohoho...

Did i also mention we noticed the rental car's gps always say we had reached near our destination instead of saying we had reached our destination most of the times when we navigated to the different places (kind of weird)? Hahaaa....

Places visited:
Lucky Pierrot
Misuzu Coffee Daimon Branch
Yakumo
Boyotei (Address: 049-5721 Hokkaido, Abuta District, Toyako, Toyako Onsen 36-12)
Toya Lake Line Cruise

Hotel Stayed:
Hotel Cocoa

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Hakodate, Hokkaido Trip (Day 5)

15th May 2019, Wednesday

Grassland in Yakumo

Hotel Car Park
Today, we are leaving Nooribetsu and heading down to Hakodate. It is going to be a long journey as the road trip is going to be 4 hours long. We packed our luggage and checked out the hotel. Then we hit the road, and went onto the expressway. There was few cars on the road and most of the cars were driving at faster speed than us. We decided to stop at the last stop point, which happened to be Yakumo and had a rest as i had been driving for around 2 hours plus. At the stop point, we bought some milk, puddings and some snacks before hitting the road again. We managed to reach our hotel in Hakodate safely and parked the car at the parking lot provided by the hotel. However, we were unable to check in the hotel when we arrived and so we left our luggage at the hotel and headed out to explore the city.

Lucky Pierrot Set

Lucky Egg Burger

Chinese Chicken Burger

In-house Soda Drink
We decided to head to the nearest Lucky Pierrot branch, which the hotel staff recommended us to go for a try. It is the fast food chain only in Hakodate and it is not available elsewhere. We just walked to the destination as i wanted a break from the driving. Plus, i can take photos and enjoy the view as i walked. It was a 10 mins walk from the hotel and luckily there wasn't a queue at the fast food restaurant. So we were able to get an available table and ordered our food. We ordered their top 2 recommended burgers and a cup of fries. The chicken burger (top 1st) was super yummy, the chicken meat was very juicy. The number 2 burger was with hamburger steak and a sunny side up egg. It was also very yummy. There were other burgers available and curry rices too. They even have their own kind of soda drinks (quite weird).

Mashu maru

Seats in the ship

Ship Crew's uniforms
Musical boxes with different designs
Inside shops

Pudding and Cheesecake Set

Exterior of Red Bricks Warehouse
After lunch, we headed further down to have a walk and we ended up visiting a ship museum named Mashu maru near the port. It was an old ship where it was now used as a museum to showcase the inner of the ship and the history of the ship. We had to pay a small entrance fee to enter the ship to view the exhibition inside. The ship was big and a lot of collection to view. After that, we walked toward the Red Bricks Warehouse. There were many shops to see and many food products to buy too. There was even a big shop selling musical boxes with different design. There were wooden types too and all the boxes were very beautiful. So we ended up spending long time in the shop and buying 3 musical boxes from the shop. We also bought some anime socks and toys plus a pudding set and we walked till almost 7 plus. There were 2 more Lucky Pierrot branches around too (You can visit the different branches as the shop themes are different in every branch).

Horsan Ramen Entrance

Dry version

Soup version
Beds and TV

Dinning and Cooking area
After that, we went to try noodles from a popular noodle restaurant named Horsan Ramen. The place was quite small, we ordered a dry and a soup version of the noodles. The noodles tasted like our hor fan style. The noodles was quite cheap too, less than 1000 jap yen. After dinner, we walked back to our hotel but it was quite cold as we walked. We managed to get our room key from the counter and went up to our room. It was a mini apartment with two beds, in the living room and there was a cooking area too. There was washing machine in the toilet area too and a bathtub. Finally, we can rest for the day and of course, i had my pudding that was bought at the stop point today...yum yum...

Places visited:
Lucky Pierrot
Mashu Maru
Red Bricks Warehouse
Horsan Ramen

Hotel Stayed:
Hotel Paco Hakodate