Hokkaido 1

April 30th, 2007, sunny

Yeah, you guessed it! I went the mostnorthernly island of Japan-Hokkaido!

Initially, I heard it on the news that cherry blosoms in Hokkaido would bloom around Golden Week, which is the first week of May, so Matt and I decided to go to Hokkaido during Golden Week. According to my Japanese friend, the meaning of Golden Week is that almost everyday of the first week of May happens to be a national holiday. Since Japanese people do not seem to have a lot of time off, the first week of May to them is GOLDEN!

The capital of Hokkaido is Sapporo. Maybe it is the time we went, but I think Sapporo is a very commercial and industrial city.

About 5ーminute walk from hotel, there is this long street called Tanukikoji 狸小路．It is divided into 7 blocks. Each block has many restaurants and small shops! Matt and I went there all the nights we were in Sapporo for food and souvenirs.

Like I said above, Sapporo is a modern city, so one interesting tourist trap is Hokkaido's chocolate factory. I don't know if you have ever had Sapporo's chocolate sandwich cookies, but those are made here! Sapporo's chocolate sandwich cookies are made of a two thin layers of baked milk cookies with a thin layer of chocolate or milk cream sandwiched in between. Yum yum!!

Here is a picture of me drinking the factory's special cocoa! (Does anyone here know what does Cacao mean? Is it just a mis-spelling for cocoa? The entire place has cocoa spelt this way.....)

Anyways, Rice, is this what having afternoon high tea feels like?

As cool as watching how those sandwich cookies are made is, I think the factory would be much more fun if it had more interactive parts for tourists to get their hands dirty and make their own cookies!!

After the chocolate factory, we had planned to go to a flower garden to see Cherry blosoms. But it was way too cold that day, so we decided to go to a local zoo instead.

I can't even remember when was the last time I went to a zoo. So, even though I was irriated by the changes in our plans, I had great fun looking at cute animals!

See, here is a picture of me and a cute, chubby seal lying in the background sleeping. I tried to wake it, but it was too lazy to even repond! So funny.