Day 2 of the trip! After a tiring first day of a midnight flight, + driving in the dark/rain/winding roads to Furano, it was a clear skies on the next day!
Chu totoro gets packing and ready to go! Outside, autumn colours!!
One of many japanese vending machines, this one dispenses TV cards to watch pay-TV in the hotel
One of the most amazing milk ever at the hotel breakfast. This small bottle would have cost ~160yen in the shops, >SGD2.
Wenhui all decked up in boots and ready to roll! Prince Furano hotel in beautiful temperate light!
Our first stop Furano Ice Milk factory, producing cheeses of local milk! Here Wenhui corresponding with the milk producer.
Yummy cheese samples for tasting! The black ones on the left are blended with squid ink! Oooh!!
The 2nd stop was the Furano Wine factory. Here an expansive shot of the entrance, aptly named Chateau Furano!! I guess the French influence on wine is everywhere!
Too used to Australian Chardonnays, blancs, some German Rieslings and some French whites, the description of this 'Ciel' wasn't in any sort of book which we have comed across! Nevertheless, we felt that this was great and we bought a couple of bottles! Ciel means 'sky' in Japanese,...I stand corrected!
The next stop was Shikisai no Oka, with cultivated flowers of a myraid array of colours! The sunflower season seems to have ended reently with dead beds of sunflowers. Here a classic view of blue skies, and rows of colours! With a white house to boot!!
Still at Shikisai no Oka, another shot which I like.
Japanese accessories/sourvenoirs are impeccably made and packaged. Here's an exmple of plastic encased flowers, in backlit situation.
Our next stop is at the Otokoyama Sake brewery. This was a great day, with cheese, wine, and now sake!! Here's 男山, one of the most famous sake from Japanese. And this is the highest grade of them all! Tasting remarkably different from regular sake, I couldn't decide if I like it! This has hints of Moutai to it rather than the usual sake signatures.
Wenhui putting on a 男山 costume, ready to make her own sake!!
Light was falling fast, we spent too much time on cheese, wine and sake, and this was enroute to Abashiri at Ryusei & Ginga falls. It was really windy and conditions were very cold. I didn't bring any ND filters nor tripod and can't pull anything more than 1.3 seconds on the shutter and this was the best I achieved with limited gear.
With light fading fast, the skies changed and we stopped to snap when we felt like it. Here Wenhui's dad capturing the last light of the day.
Trees beginning to be barren in the autumn.
My usual practice, start stripping shoes etc and take a shot of the hotel, here at hotel Abashirikoso with a traditional tatami seating area.
The gigantic portions of the dinner, what you see is not the complete set for ONE person,YET!! Hurray!!! We tried our first Onsen (common bath/hot spring) tonight and I didn't really enjoy....seeing naked men all around...sigh.
A long and satisfying day of cheese, wine, sake, great lunch (not shown here), cold afternoon, nice sunset, fantastic dinner!
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