Day 2 (16 Oct) - Haneda - Sapporo (扎幌) - Lake Toya (洞爷湖)

We touched down at the Narita Airport around 7am, met up with the entire tour group of 46 and proceeded to take a domestic flight to Sapporo.

Upon arrival at Sapporo, our first tourist site was the Ainu Museum Foundation (popularly known as Porotokotan, which means a large lakeside village). We were greeted by a light drizzle.

"Ainu" is originally an Ainu word meaning "human". The Ainu, the indigenous people of Hokkaido with their own culture and language, had lived in Hokkaido, the northern part of Japan's Tohoku region, southern Sakhalin and Chishima Island before those areas were developed by Japanese and Russian settlers. Several tens of thousands of Ainu still live in Hokkaido and other areas.

The museum brochure (http://www.ainu-museum.or.jp/):

The thatched houses:

Museum exhibits on the Ainu civilisation:

We then headed to this restaurant for lunch. Bears have something to do with the Ainu - sorry, I wasn't paying attention when the local tour guide was giving the background on it, hee hee. You'll see quite a bit of bears in Hokkaido. On the first floor, there is a wet market section stocked with seafood and another section where you can pick up local specialities. The restaurant is on the second floor. You can pick the seafood from the wet market and the restaurant kitchen can prepare it for your consumption.

Side-track a little: The tour guide is a Taiwanese who came to Japan for her studies in her youth and subsequently settled down here.

Our steamboat lunch which went really well with the cold weather (chilly winds and temperature of between 10-15 degree celcius). The miso soup base was simple yet refreshing.

I'm an ardent lover of seafood so imagine my delight at the range of seafood available for sale at the wet market section:

After lunch, we were taken to the Lake Hill Farm, Lake Toya where we got to make our own ice-cream (after the staff gave a demo).

While my tour mates got busy, Grimlock and I went around to check out the place :)

The shop-front...

It was just about 5pm. The lighting doesn't look dark on this photo but in actual, it was something like 8pm back in Singapore. Grimlock saw a kitten but it made a fast disappearance before we could approach it.

The unprocessed cheese (I like!) looked so enticing. The farm keeps its own herd of cows. We were treated to fresh milk which tasted so good.

The fruit of labour! The texture was light but the flavour was very pleasant.

The recipe for DIY ice-cream:

My last parting shot of the place:

That wrapped up the day. Our resting place for the night was Toya Sunpalace (http://www.toyasunpalace.co.jp/). All the rooms command a panoramic view of Lake Toya. Lake Toya is a representative tourist spot of Hokkaido, and enjoys the reputation of being "a paradise with forests and a lake" (which I fully agree, 实至名归!). Among other facilities, the resort hotel is equipped with an open-air bath, a Hinoki wooden bath, three-step bath, jumbo bath and lakeside baths. The Yukata (a robe) is placed in the rooms of hotels in the hot spring resort. You put it on if you're planning to take a dip in the hot spring/baths. Our tour guide told us that the correct way of wearing the Yukata is to fold the left flap inside and then the right. The reverse method of folding is for the dead.

I managed to discard all inhibitions and went for the three-step bath. Prior to stepping in to the bath, you've to first go to a designated area where you wash/scrub yourself clean. The hot bath was truly rejuvenating after a long, tiring day! The night was capped with a fireworks display (we watched it in the comfort of our room).