Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 86

Another day-trip, this time to Furano. Along the way, we took some pictures again from the train windows to show some of the architecture (alot of flat-roofed houses). We also noticed alot of little gardens along-side the train tracks. There were alot quite a few rice fields in the open areas outside of the towns.

Furano is in the middle of Hokkaido island, giving it the nickname of "the bellybutton of Hokkaido". It is famous for it's lavendar fields although there are alot of other flowers as well. In the winter, it is a great place for skiing and snowboarding .. they held the 1977 Alpine Ski World Cup there. During the summer, the ski slopes become hiking trails.

We waited until that the day before to check on getting on the Twinkle Bus (yes, it is actually called the Twinkle Bus), which is a bus that takes you around to the various sights. Unfortunately, we were there during peak Lavender season and the Twinkle bus was all full, so we ended up doing a DIY tour.

So from the train station, we grabbed a taxi and asked to go to the Furano Grape Juice Factory. In the information we had in English, they mentioned tours and tasting, but that was a bit of a stretch. They had a board that explained (in Japanese only) the process of taking the grapes, the machines that removed the stems, took out the juice, and bottled it. We did get to taste some grape juice and ended up buying a jar of grape jelly and some grape juice ice cream. It had a nice view outside of the mountains.

There were no taxi's waiting outside and so they gave us a little map that indicated a way to walk to the Furano Winery, which is listed as 1.5 km. Not far, so off we went! The routing took us through the grape fields and was a really nice walk with some great scenery.

We also went by a lavender field, along with a few other flowers. Being July, it was peak Lavender season.

Then we made our way to the Furano Winery. This is actually operated by Furano's municipal government, and is the Northern-most winery in all of Japan. It was established in 1972 and they have developed their own varieties of grapes including wild mountain grapes that are native to Hokkaido. No tour again, but we were able to walk through and look. Then we were able to taste the various wines available and we picked up a single bottle of a white called "Ciel" (sky).

From the winery, we grabbed another taxi and headed to the Furano Cheese Factory. We again got to walk through and somewhat see how they make the various cheese and in their store, got to taste a variety of cheese. Their brochure talks about tours of the production processes and Q&A sessions, although we didn't really see any of those. There is also a hands-on workshop (we saw the sign-up for it) where you can learn how to produce butter, ice cream, bread, and cheese. Tom got friendly with the cow that was in the cheese shop.

Another taxi up to the downtown area. Now, this downtown could be in almost any small town in the US, with a little main street with small shops all along the way. They also had this little mascot-guy in the sidewalks, statues on the bridges, and this life-size one that Tom got up close to.

Lunch was, well, interesting. We had jotted down the name and address of a restaurant that came recommended and we were having a heck of a time finding it. Then we walked by this parking lot with a old house-looking building in the back-part, with a line of people waiting to get in. hmmm.... the guys at work tell me that only good restaurants have a line outside, so we decided to give it a try. Go figure .. this was the restaurant we were looking for!! Anyway, we waited in line for a few minutes and ended up talking to the people in front of us who when we got to the front, basically said there were 4 of us and we were seated together. Along the walls everywhere were little post-it notes with what I imagine were things for sale.

It took awhile to find out what Guarana was .. it is a carbonated soft drink that was created 50 years ago by a Japanese company to compete with Coca-Cola. For the 50th anniversary, the Nihon Co-up released a special edition glass bottle. Then for lunch, we had different curry-rice dishes: one with sausage and one with lamb (Tom of course ate the lamb).

And of course, as we left we happened to see the sign.

We stopped by this little bakery and grabbed a little puff-ball-looking bread thing, which was quite tasty although we really have no idea exactly what it was.

Then we headed back to the train station and caught it back to Sapporo. After a quick change, we went out in search of a yakitori place. The place we had wanted to go was closed, so after wandering through the basement of the same building, we picked a little tiny yakitori place. We sat at a bar with lots and lots of sake bottles.

Mind you .. the menu was purely in japanese. The guy that was serving us was very helpful and was doing charades to indicate what part of the pig the pork in the yakitori was from.

We were sitting so that we could somewhat see the grill, where the yakitori chef would cook after skewering up the appropriate meat or veggie. We went through a few different Yakitori's, basically all pork or veggies.

Terrible picture, but this was the really wonderful guy who was helping us.

Last morning, we headed over to the Nijo Fish Market for a sushi breakfast. The market is quite small, only basically one city block. We got there at 7am when they opened, although some shops opened a bit earlier than others. We roamed around for about 20 minutes, snapping various pictures of the shops and their local seafood. The market dates back to 1903

We finally settled on this tiny sushi place (literally, 2 stools at the counter) where we had a perfect place to watch the sushi chef make each of the pieces that we ordered.