Day one at Hokkaido

Had an awfully painful ulcer. Even drinking water hurts. So i tried to slp off the pain on the plane. Turns out we had a passenger worse off than me. Someone required medical attention urgently and so the pilot decided to land at the HK Intn'l airport. Stayed onboard for 2 hours before taking off again, and we landed at Narita, Tokyo late. We missed the flight to Sapporo and when we eventually reached there, it was drizzling and about 19 degrees. Cold! So we missed a supposedly sumptuous sashimi lunch and had our itenerary rescheduled for the next few days. Went on to the Ainu Village to view some performances. ('Ainus' are considered the natives of Japan, but they don't look any different)

Afterwhich, we headed to the onsen hotel, and enjoyed a superb sashimi buffet dinner along with warm sake. Had probably the most sashimi helping in one meal - like 20 ebis or sth, endless cuttlefish and salmon sashimi. After a very filling dinner, we returned to the room for some rest. The room is laid with tatami mats and the chambermaids would come around to set the mattresses and put on fresh sheets. Whilst they were at it, my mom and i tried to figure out what programmes were showing on TV. And we gave up cus they were all in japanese. There was a fireworks display by Lake Toya which was just in front of the hotel. So we enjoyed the cool breeze and watched the fireworks from our room. Soon after, We met up with other ladies from the tour group and we headed for the hotspring in our 'yukata'. It was really good! Oh maybe not the hotspring per se, but the whole experience of it.


The Japanese are very particular about mannerisms and hygeine, so our guide had to brief us on the correct 'procedures' in the onsen (hot spring). They have some 30 shower counters, where you sit on little stools to shower, with a wide range of products for you to use. They had at least 2 types of shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, facial wash, facial scrub, foot scrub, exfoliating gel, etc. Super shiok. I had thought that i would just shower in 5min and get out of the totally open shower area, but i spent at least 15min sitting there. The good thing is that Japanese pp are very considerate and they do not stare or look at you. For a virgin hotspring visitor, i must say that it was pretty embarassing, but i got used to it after awhile. And as if it isn't pampering enough, we had a whole long counter of hair dryers, cotton pads, combs, moisturisers, facial cream and leg cream and all sorts of things! And they have a sanitizing machine whereby pp put the comb in after using. I was really impressed by the civic-mindedness of their people and their graciousness in everything.

Sleeping was easy after such a relaxing bath. Chatted with my mom over hot green tea in the room and i fell aslp...