Cerita Hokkaido



Okay, maybe aku patut citer pasal trip aku ke Hokkaido kot. Aku pun dah lama tak bercerita kat sini.

My trip to Hokkaido was between Oct. 15th till Oct. 22nd last month. It was 8 days and 6 nights trip. Overall, I think the trip was a bit overrated. Hahahaha, yeah I know, it was so anti climax but anyhow, I'd like to state it in a very positive way.

I made some new friends and revive an old friendship from my previous workplace. The friends I hung out during the trip are some cool people and they are at the top of their game. Sometimes I wonder, how lucky I was to be in the same bus tour with them.



We spent most of our time in the bus tour. The bus driver is a very kind old chap and he never speaks English. So towards the middle of the trip I decided to no longer attempt to speak with him in English. I developed a language of my own with the Japanese. It's more like a sign language with some Malay words sprinkled all over the places. The cool thing about him, he seems to agree on everything I said.

Our bus tourist guide is 'marverrouussss'! Frank is a very sincere and funny guy to hand out with. He's a Singaporean who studied and worked in Japan for the last..urmm..6 or 7 years, I guess. He speaks Japanese very well and he speaks English like a Japanese does. More importantly, he can speak fluent Malay as well. That counts a whole lot deal when we need some translation.



There were a few places which we visited outside of Sapporo City. Sapporo is like a capital for Hokkaido's island. The city itself is a huge one. Gile besaq aa bila aku tengok dari atas bukit Okura. Setakat KL tu cam ciput ajer compare dengan Sapporo.

We stayed at a couple of hotels - Renaissance Hotel @ Sapporo, Sun Palace Hotel @ Lake Toya, some decent hotel at Sounkyo.



I must say that Hokkaido is a place where you must to enjoy the scenic view. If you don't like to spend time with nature, most likely this place is out of tune for you. Thank god that I am one of the nature lovers.



We visited among many places are Noboribetsu, Bear Ranch at Mt Showa, Edo's World, flower gardens at Furano, Okurayama Skiing Stadium, Susukino @ Sapporo and shopping malls around the city. Maybe I left a few places to list here but nevermind, I don't think they are worth to write here.

One of the activities that I think worth to mention here is to visit 'onsen'. Onsen is a hot spring where a lot of people come and rest their body and mind in the pool filled with hot water. The interesting part is that everybody must be butt naked in the pool. Did I visit the place? Of course I did. It's like a must for tourist to visit onsen. Armed with small tower and my yukata, a few of us marched to onsen when many visitors left the place. We had quite a bond while bathing in onsen. Hahahahah...I let you do the rest of imagination here.



I think it's worth for me to write about Japanese food. I tell you, we tend to appreciate our food when we are faraway from our own mother land. True enough, I started to crave for nasi lemak and some nasi campur on the fifth day of the trip because I couldn't stand the seafood. The Japanese food has not much of variation. At least for what I ate there. Some of us did bring cili padi and some stocks of Mee maggi with them.

The meal in Hokkaido can be considered quite expensive though. For a decent and complete meal, the price would be around 1,000 yen plus. That is equivalent to RM 34++. So you can imagine how expensive it is to get your stomach filled in Japan. Of course McDonald is much cheaper but for how long you can survive on that cheapo fish fillet burger. Or maybe Ebi burger (yes they do have a shrimp burger in McD Japan).

Luckily all our food arrangement were sponsored by the company. Oh yeah, that was heaven! On the last night, we were brought to eat crabs. I tell you, my stomach was full of crabs by the time we left that place. I ate like there is no tomorrow. Hahahahaha.



We all came home on the 22nd of October. Some of us brought quite a few bags from Hokkaido but I remained light as ever. I didn't shop much in Hokkaido because it was expensive to get things over there. All in all, I think this first trip I had with Public Mutual is a good place to rest my mind and created bonds with some other people who are outside of my group. Knowledge gained, experiences acquired and relationship grew.