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Tuesday, August 30, 2005
hokkaido part 3 - furano... 7/28
we left sapporo for furano early next morning... along the way, we stopped by for a toilet break, and there coincidentally, was a nice little waterfall...
三段滝 (sandantaki i think)
the guy above was just some random guy... too lazy to wait for him to get out of the picture lah... that's why... anyway here are a couple of the pictures of the natural waterfall...
me with fangyi (who perpetually had his earphones with him throughout the trip... trying to look like shaman king? ;p)
our targetted destination was actually farm Tomita, a rather famous ones for belts of different colours of flowers planted around the farm... (especially famous for its lavendar).. but when we were nearing, we can't help but stop by and take some photos when we saw this ski-slope-turned-flower-bed...
me and tshush...
the long road up the ski slope (there's gondola on the other side of the slope, but to use, have to pay... so...)
many nice different flowers were on display there...
dunno what name, but the yellow and orange sure made them look real nice!!
poppy plant?? they have opium?? hmm....
yellow things are always nice... and of cos yellow flowers are included... nice hor? like a windows default wallpaper liddat...
of course, how can we forget the highlight - lavendar?
me amongst lavendar...
fiona and me ;)
the view from the ski slope... forebodding weather? turned out real fine in the end.. we were lucky... hehe
after spending like close to 2 hours on such a small patch of flowers, i was pretty apprehensive over how long we would be spending in tomita... the sight that greeted us after we got out of our car was this...
the sign says "tomita melon house".. hmm... didnt know they were famous for planting melons too...
what's a farm visit if a man doesnt get to play with some tools rite? well here's me with a tractor (display only lah.. haha)
well here are some photos of the lavendar fields...
as i have mentioned, farm tomita is famous for lavendar... and of course the products they make from it... they do make things like potpourris, perfumes, soaps and other shower products, err ice-cream (counted or not?), air fresheners, etc. etc. and there at farm tomita, we could see some of the processes...
lavendar picked and dried hung upside down...
machine and ppl bundling them up to form potpourris...
in another room, here's one person err injecting essence of lavendars into little bottles... for the scent perhaps? dunno...
and in the same room, 2 other persons are making lavendar soaps...
the person of the left, she's using the machine to press the soap into shape, while the right gal was wrapping up the ready soaps 1 by 1...
well, here's how the soap looks like at different stages of the process... if you are interested like i was... hehe
can see the shop slowly taking shape... ;)
here's a bit of the view from a porch high up the fields...
not too bad hor?
i was pretty elated to find sunflowers growing there as well... well sunflowers are my favorite u see, because, you guessed it, they are yellow! hehe... so bright and cheery and all.. heehee
so big... and they were almost as tall as me!
realised now that i hadnt uploaded a lot of the famous belts-of-flowers photos... but anyway, here's one...
nice hor? incidentally if you noticed, this is the photo were i got my blog header picture from... hehe...
anyway we spent quite a lot of time in the farm as expected... too many flowers for the gals to take photos with liao... when we finally could leave, we went to the cheese factory as well as the wine factory (and its vineyard)...
cheese factory... nothing spectacular, so no other photos...
chateau furano... where they make wines... rather mild ones at that... with fangyi (note his earphones again)
at the basement cellar... can sleep there... cos very nice and cool.. hehe...
some berries for wine making from the vineyard...
as it was turning dark, we went to check into our farmstay accommodation... and we had ample room for all of us...
stand-by bunk! haha...
how the interior of a bunk looks like... not bad lah... (again notice the earphones)
we went out to take some photos before the sun had set...
sunsetting at a distance...
did something unusual... posed for a photo with jasmine while doing weird faces... me usually dun do such uncool stuff one lah... ;p
a black-and-white photo of the farm... makes it look like macham world war 3 aftermath hor? haha
our buffet was farm style, which involved us actually bbqing our meat and veggie...
a family having dinner right before us...
the dinner was so-so, the stay was so-so, but didnt think the whole farmstay affair was worthed the 7k that i paid for it (that included milking cows, and feeding hay to horses the next morning)... well.. other ppl happy can liao lah...
we decided to go for star-gazing on that very night, as we could see lots of stars, and it was a pretty sight... but by the time all of us bathed, clouds covered the whole sky, and we coulded see anything much... so sad... no luck lah...
and that's how furano went...
next up, biei (pronounced as bee-ay) and i think can wrap up hokkaido liao... hehe...
posted by winz at 1:36 PM
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