I played Animal Kaiser at the local arcade, so that I could bring a few (new) cards home for Jed.

We don’t drink.  Nonetheless, the vineyards were nice to look at !

The next stop was Farm Tomita, to see Lavender Flowers.  Thankfully there were sufficient lavender and other flowers remaining for plenty of pretty pictures.

Bottommost picture : The ubiquitous Japanese vending machines.  They are everywhere, and sell everything conceivable — drinks, ice cream, snacks and cigarettes.  We did not see any condom dispensing machines in this outwardly conservative society though and unfortunately, none of the infamous machines which purportedly dispense soiled underwater to indulge repressed male fantasies as well.  (I would clarify that by "unfortunate" I do not mean that we hoped to buy soiled underwear.  Rather, having read about the existence of such machines, it would have been quite fascinating to see an actual machine).

We were unfortunately not in Hokkaido at the right time for sunflowers (or, for that matter, any type of flowers).  Although the second picture below looks pretty enough, the sunflowers in the background are pretty much of dead or dying sunflowers. 

I’m not a fan of noodles, particularly noodles in soup because it is far too warm in Singapore to eat anything in hot soup, and because noodles can get quite messy to eat.  The ramen we had for dinner, however, just blew my mind.

(Close to Susukino Station is a lane of Ramen shops)

(Lane of Ramen shops)

(The char siew ramen which has permanently altered my view of noodles)

"Daddy where did you put the gigantic iPhone [ on ] which you can play games?"

What was exciting about this Japanese department store was not the shopping, but it’s basement food hall.  Takashimaya Singapore was probably modelled after Japanese food halls like this, but Daimaru was ten times more exciting.

(Last photo : Hokkaido melons retail at obsence prices.  The one in the photograph immediately above costs about SGD 40 each !)

First stop after picking up the car at Chitose Airport, was a quick stop by the Chitose Salmon Aquarium, because we suaku Singaporeans have never seen live salmon before.  (There were not many salmon in / at the museum, hence the absence of any photographs of salmon other than dead ones in this and the next few posts).