Japan continued.....

So as I left you we were in Tokyo.....next stop Sapporo!  As we flew out of Tokyo we had a great view of Mount Fuji on the plane - here is the best photo I managed to get out of the window.

Mt Fuji and Tokyo!

We could have got the train I guess, but the closest we got to a bullet train was a picture in Tokyo.

The duck billed platypus of trains?

When we arrived in Sapporo we got our first view of snow.  It was exciting sat at the airport seeing the snow outside knowing we were going skiing

snow!!!

We got the bus to Niseko which was our ski resort for 3 days.  It snowed on our journey which is always good when you are heading skiing.  Niseko gets 10+ metres of snow in a season so I was very hopeful for the skiing conditions.

This was the view that met us from our hotel room when we arrived - night skiing and snow!

The most surprising discovery of our hotel was the onsen! There was lots of instructions we had to learn - washing beforehand, wearing nothing (!!!) and putting a towel on your head, but once we got over the rules sitting outside in a hot spring with the snow coming down was an experience to remember!  Sadly there are no photos (see previous comment about wearing nothing to understand why....)

The skiing was great - we had fresh snow on the first day which meant some nice tracks through the forest, and even on the windy day the snow was blowing onto the hill so still worth hitting the slopes.  Hannah did her version of snowboarding (aka snowboarding lite - 2 hours a day is plenty for anybody) and I tried to do at least a few more hours than that.

snowboarding dude

forest tracks

this hand signal means 'i've had enough, can I go to the cafe now'

The village in Niseko was also great fun.  We went to another izakaya one evening and then also discovered a very tasty ramen cafe.  In between we found a bar behind a fridge door which served good beer and cocktails - as you will guess from previous blogs once we found this we then visited the following two evenings.

Tasty ramen joint (of course with beer)

There is tasty beer and cocktails behind that fridge door :-)

After our fun in Niseko we got the bus back to Sapporo and then had one night to enjoy Sapporo.  Our first trip was to the ski jump.  It had decided to start snowing heavily so after a walk through deep snow in the park we made it to the ski jump and got the lift to the top.  The snow did not do wonders for the view but it did make the walk there all the more pretty.  I've got a photo from the bottom, for the top I'll make another plug for my flickr site here

we went up the lift on the left

After the ski jump there was only one other thing left to do in Sapporo - beer!  Sapporo beer has been a personal favourite of mine ever since I was served it by my dad in a rather exciting "almost round but slightly hexagonal" can back in Ramsbottom many years ago.  So we made our way to the Sapporo beer house and brewery.  We had found out that the beer hall is famous for "Genghis Kahn" which is essentially BBQ lamb served with vegetables.  We also then discovered that you could have an all your can eat and drink deal for 100mins (yes, measured by time!) which of course was a challenge we could not turn down.  I've got some photos of beforehand but not after - suffice to say that after this feast all we managed was to spend too much in the gift shop (due to the all you can drink) and then waddle back to our hotel (due to the all you can eat!)

warming up for the beer house with a can in the hotel

not quite Christmas at the brewery, but it felt like it!

the BBQ, soon to be covered in lamb, and me, soon to be full of beer and lamb

and then on the Sunday we sadly had to leave to the airport and fly home.  Japan had been a great trip and we left it full of happy memories (and beer and lamb of course!!)

 

Guangzhou grey skies and Tokyo blue ones

Months to catch up on seems, this one is going to require a search through some photos and calendars to remember what we have been up to!

We left you at Chinese New Year way back at the end of January and our trip to Manila (from which I am sure you are all pleased to know Hannah has fully recovered and is back to eating crisps and sweets in copious amounts).  February contained our first ever trip to the mainland.  First we got our visas sorted - because the UK charges Chinese to visit the UK, China very helpfully does the same for UK citizens visiting China, which is fair enough I guess.  Then we bought our train tickets, booked our hotel and headed off to Guangzhou for the weekend.  Guangzhou is in fact the 3rd largest city in China which I guess makes it the Leeds of China.  However, there the similarities probably end.  It's a bit of a hard place to describe really - in some ways there was quite a bit to see, but in other ways it was a big mass of urban grey sprawl that did not really grab you as somewhere to visit.  I'm glad we went, but probably won't be rushing to go back.

Gardens (and grey sky)

Hunger games type crazy performance stages

you don't buy rubber bands in ones in Guangzhou

Church with some colour flags at least

hello kitty cafe

the nicely lit up Guangzhou tower

We were also lucky to have lots of visitors in February, both friends and family.  I'll save you from their photos (am concerned about image rights!) but it was nice to show some more people our current home and have an excuse to visit lots of our favourite places.

In March we then had a long planned trip to Japan.  This has been booked for months (probably in fact nearly a year) and it lived up to all the expectation.  We spent the first few days in Tokyo, then flew up to Sapporo to spend some days skiing in Niseko before spending a night in Sapporo on the way home.  Japan was brilliant fun - friendly people, loads to see and do, tasty food and beer, easy to get around - pretty much everything you could want in a holiday.  If you get the chance then go!

Firstly in Tokyo we stayed on the river and spent 3 days walking around and seeing everything we could.  Its a big list only really slightly captured by photos - but we went into gardens, temples, markets, bars, restaurants.  A couple of highlights were visiting the Gonpachi that is supposed to have inspired one of the big scenes in Kill Bill - food was OK, but for atmosphere and a place to see it was great!  and then also finding great craft beer bars in lots of places.  There are loads more photos here

Kill Bill inspiration?

found some blossom (not sure if I mean Hannah or the tree)

and of course we found the best pizza

and the best beer....

and Hannah found shopping

the hotel view was not bad!

note the blue sky, slight different to our previous trip!  sadly it was too windy when we tried to go up the tower

After Tokyo we flew up to Sapporo - but I think I'll save that for another blog, mainly because its the weekend here and I have a appointment booked with a local beer establishment.  Goodbye till next time :-)