Otaru City Of Canals - Hokkaido

I would vote Otaru as the most interesting place to visit in Hokkaido. It is a small harbour city which you could make a day trip from Sapporo by train. We only covered Sapporo, Otaru, Muroran & Chitose towns during our trip.

We walked out of our Sapporo hotel to visit a small Buddhist Shrine

which is located on the next block. Here is the nice entrance

to the shrine.

This is the Amitabha Buddha's Shrine which was closed on that day.

Our hotel is just next block to this Hosui Susukino Train

Station in Sapporo. It is very easy to reach everywhere once

you are inside the train station. We connected our way to the main

Sapporo Station and hopped to the line that took us to Otaru.

OTARU CANAL CITY - HOKKAIDO

It takes slightly over 1 hour by a normal train which passed 

through many picturesque snow scenery and mountains along 

the way. Here at the Otaru Station, there is a Tourist Information

Booth where there was a friendly lady who spoke Japanese,

English, Mandarin and Cantonese!! She advised us to take the

public bus to the end of the bus route and get off.

 My postcard pose at the lovely old buildings with European

architectures during Hokkaido's colonization during the 1800s.

They have many lovely old warehouses and herring mansions that line

along the famous Otaru Canal.

 We had to stop by the world famous Hokkaido Ice Cream parlour.

They have the purest lavender and melon flavours. Too many to choose.

  

Here is my yummy 6 flavoured ice cream! Sluurrpss!!

There are many fresh seafood restaurants along

the many streets in Otaru.

It was my first time seeing Snow Crab alive!

  

The prices scared me!

We took a ropeway (cable car) up to Mount Tengu.

Mount Tengu is a very popular ski resort in Hokkaido.

This is the panoramic view of Otaru Town with its harbours
and the Shakotan Peninsula across the seas.

***

68th Sapporo Snow Festival 2017

We just got home after a week long holiday in Hokkaido, Japan. It was a wonderful experience for my wife to see real snow falling from the skies for the first time. She screamed so excitedly like a happy child again. In the past, she had seen plenty of snow in China and even South Korea during our ski trip but the snow didn't fall from the skies then. 

NEW CHITOSE AIRPORT - HOKKAIDO, JAPAN

  

Our overnight flight took over 8 hours from Kuala Lumpur

to Sapporo at Hokkaido, Japan. We had difficulty to sleep well

even with the front row's spacious "hot seats".

 This is the New Chitose Airport which is very huge and

made headlines recently when the China tourists had

a nasty brawl inside with the airport officers over the

unexpected delays due to snow storm.

 They have many interesting facilities inside the airport

such as retail shops, seafood markets, museums,

children's play lands and even a spa with a hot spring

onsen for the public to relax.

 They have ample sitting areas to have coffee or browse

your smartphones with free WIFI which was very powerful.

  

The famous ROYCE chocolate factory in Hokkaido

took up large areas to house their chocolate museum,

cafe and retail shops!

  

There are so many types of chocolates here!

 We saw many cute and lovely cakes, desserts and ice cream

sold in many shops. They are so creative and innovative!

This is one of the many seafood mini markets indifr the airport
that sold all kinds of seafood catch from Hokkaido's famous seas.

 They sold many frozen crabs, fishes, squids and everything

from the ocean..... Yes, inside the airport!

68th. SAPPORO SNOW FESTIVAL 2017

 We took a train from the airport and arrived at this Sapporo's

JR Station which was full of people and excitement inside.

 It is always packed with locals and the thousands of tourists 

who arrive each day to discover Hokkaido.

  

 My wifey outside the Sapporo's JR Station.

It was -3 degrees C.

  

Yours truly posing outside the Sapporo's JR Station.

The snow festival was held in 3 different park areas in Sapporo

but we only visited the main one at Odori park.

They had many stalls selling barbequed seafood, sake

and souvenirs.

 

There were many snow sculptures on display and we came

here because Sapporo's Snow Festival has always been rated

the BEST. It is different from Ice Carvings.

Yours truly with 2 cute Japanese cartoons.

 They even built Donald Trump.

 Everything was so white and would hurt our eyes!

So we wore shades.

 

You could guess who is this singer?

 The snow man and I.

We made our way walking through their mile long shopping

area underground and spotted this talking robot who was

so talkative, friendly and welcomed everyone in

any language you wished to speak.

  

We stayed for 2 nights at the popular red lights area in Susukino

district and my wife's eyes went wide seeing the hot

GROs wearing skimpy G-strings ogling at their

customers at the full window views of the drinking clubs!

  

We enjoyed so much eating the Japanese barbeque

food which was delicious and hot to keep warm

together with a bottle of sake wine.

  

We toasted and cheered "Kampai"

Happy Valentine's Day 

to all the readers!

***

Human Rights Training In Jakarta

I came back from Jakarta over a week ago and my office's jobs piled up my head till I had terrible mental block. It was like a revenge for going away to China and Indonesia for too long. Today I feel almost back to track with my demanding work and strict Japanese clients who actually help to keep me on my toes.

I was happy and honoured to be invited by my old friend Peter Tan, to be his P.A. and accompany him to attend the recent ASEAN Secretariat Human Rights Training where he was invited to speak in their workshop. My friend Peter had come a long way after his swimming pool tragedy when he was only 18 years old, where he had dived at the shallow end by mistake and suffered from serious spinal cord injury which affected his limbs and mobility. He has struggled a lot to adapt to his fate and needs to use a wheel chair all his life. We lost touch briefly after I went to US and he got married later to a lovely banker wife who has a heart of gold. She was busy lately and unable to accompany him for this trip, so I tagged along instead.

1. We had a quick lunch at KLIA as we didn't expect MAS to serve us
lunch for this short 2 hours flight to Jakarta. Our friendship spans over
30 years today and it was very good to catch up again.

2. It was an eye opener to understand how passengers like Peter, with
special needs are being escorted to their seats in the aeroplane
using the special very narrow wheel chair, provided by the airlines.
Sadly, our AA do not have this special wheelchairs till now.

3. In Jakarta, the airport's personnel in pink uniform wheeled my
friend Peter from the plane all the way through immigration, baggage
claims until he got into the taxi to our hotel. I just tailed behind
and jumped through all the long queues too. Yay!

4. We stayed at this trendy upscale part of Jakarta City where
I could not see the slums or cardboard houses like my previous trip.
There are so many security and policemen guarding the city.
They strictly DO NOT ALLOW any photography of any buildings
yet I took them to share with you all. LOL

5. We stayed at this fabulous JW Marriott Hotel which has the
best and friendliest 5 Star services I had ever experienced.
Trust me, their services are really top notch.

6. The whole neighbourhood is very swanky with beautiful
buildings yet they stopped me from taking photos!
I should be sharing good things since I am not
a threat or terrorist.

7. One for the album by the Christmas Tree inside
the JW Marriot in Jakarta.

8. My room's window overlooked The Ritz Carlton Hotel
on the left.

9. Their F&B manager personally escorted my friend around the
restaurant and briefed him on all the exotic and delicious food.

10. I was not surprised that Japan has voted this hotel as
The Best Hotel in whole Asia! The photo is the Japanese award.

11. The whole buffet spread from breakfast to lunch and dinner
were all fantastic and good.

12. I had lots of fried pork bacons for breakfast!

13. At the 3 day event of ASEAN Secretariat Human Rights Training,
they focused on the Human Rights Mechanisms/Systems and Disability Awareness.
One excellent speaker HE. Dr Seree Nonthasoot from Thailand
shared many important demographics on the plight and needs of the disabled
population around the world. The other invited speakers touched
on other important issues too.

14. His slides pointed out that China has the highest number of
85 million disabled people! That is way higher than our whole
population of Malaysia.

15. Indonesia's disabled population is over 6 million people yet
there is so much to be done to create awareness to provide all
the assistance for the population with special needs in all
the areas from toilets, road accessibilities, public transports
and every where. I always paid attention to these issues ever
since my friend suffered from his spinal cord injury.

 16. It was Peter's turn to speak together with his partner from Laos.
He is Samnieng Thammavong who suffers from polio.

17. They gave an interesting question to all the participants.
It was an easy question, yet they were tongue tied before
giving various answers. I myself learnt something from this.
What is Disability and Where is Disability?

18. The whole group of participants from Asean countries took a farewell photo.
Yours truly sat on the floor at Peter's feet.

19. This place is the departure gate at the Soekarno–Hatta International Airport
which looks cosy! The flight home gave me a new opener on the issues
of the many people with special needs around us. Japan has one of the
best facilities in the world for their aging population which is
growing very fast. Someday, we will all grow very old and weak
where we need to have the right and proper facilities.
I am wondering whether our country will be ready
for my future needs?




Peter Tan is now a weekly columnist at
Borneo Post. You read his articles HERE.

****