Japan Trip Con't

Our next couple of days included walking around in Otaru and Sapporo and viewing the lovely cherry blossoms, we spent the first day in Otaru, going to the all famous 'canal' area as well as tried to check out the car rental service.



it was a nice little town/ city, but mostly due to tourism ( I think), trying to rent a car there was an experience, they couldn't speak English at all, but somehow, through gesturing and some noises, we managed to get our enquiry through, and by God's grace we managed to get the car a couple of days later, it was really quite funny, cos when we went to collect the car 2 days later, they had prepared a nice little document with a questionaire of things they needed to ask us, both in Japanese and English in parallel, so that they could point to the questions and we could point the answers out to them. It showed the extent of their attention to detail. but it was a lovely little town overall and we had a nice little afternoon there.

The next day, we went to Sapporo, a 30 minute train ride away, and went to visit a nice little park where the locals went to see the blossoming cherry blossoms, again a very unique experience, where the whole park was full of very happy boisterous locals, with the charred smoky scent overhanging the park because of the barbeques that were going full force as the everyone was there enjoying their nice grilled lunches with a cold 'sapporo' beer. We of course had none of that, but managed to bring home both nice memories of the afternoon in the park as well as pictures of the cherry blossoms in all their glory. It was a nice reminder of God at work in nature...




Well hopefully more pics to come... getting a little tired...

thanks for reading..

Our Japan Trip..

We had a great time in Japan, started off with staying a night at Narita, which was where the airport was and just getting adjusted to the whole Japanese experience.
It was a good rest before we headed off on a airport limousine to the Haneda airport where we took a domestic flight to Sapporo in Hokkaido.

thank God that Elijah was still drinking his milk, and was relatively manageable. We arrived in Sapporo and had a great time at a wonderful hotel in Otaru Chikko which was abt a 30 min train ride from Sapporo. It was a hotel in a outlet mall, (which wasn't v. much of a outlet mall but still a great place for us as a family, as the rooms in the hotel were very nice, huge and comfy and more importantly affordable by Japan standards, only ard SGD130)



And check out the room views... =)



Thank God for the wonderful rooms cos it would be a lot better for Elijah to run around in .. and heard so many horror stories of hotels being horrendously small and expensive in Japan.

But all was well, Japan was indeed a very well-oiled country, everything moving at super speed and efficiency, every check in and check out was without incident and took place within minutes, literally. The service standards were superb as well, with everyone being very happy (seemingly) at what they were doing. It was interesting for us to experience that.

We are Back!!

We are back and alive and healthy from Japan! thank God. The flu was again chasing just behind us in Osaka and Tokyo! Will update with pictures and all later..