Otaru Night View

i like otaru! small, peaceful town... sells lots of ornaments... and of cos their famous music boxes... made 2 music boxes myself... heehee...

some pics of otaru at night. it was snowing quite heavily at times, and it was quite difficult to get a clean, good shot. and i was so worried that the snow will go into my camera... but the snow resulted in the pictureque effect... i'm so glad i brought my tripod along, worth the effort lugging it around hokkaido...

i forgot the name of this building, but its opposite the music box museum. has an european feel to it, especially with the snow falling down.
the famous otaru canal... it was snowing like crazy a few minutes before and it just stopped suddenly. all the sudden, it was calm and peaceful, doesnt even looked like it snowed just now. the snow spoilt a lot of my photos and used up the last of my batteries... and it was a freeking freezing -3.6degrees that night.

Cute Kid

Couldnt resist taking shots of this cute kid i saw the at asahikawa zoo... kawaii!!! i wonder if its a boy or a girl...?

Tabiji at Hakodate

my fave at hakodate - the meal at tabiji restaurant in the asa-ichi fish market. another masterpiece meal. so superb. and very cheap. we ordered lots of food and the total bill came up to only about 3,780yen (sin$49). SO CHEAP! and for such high quality food! shiok!

here's what we ordered...

1) mini-don set (1,050yen, sin$13.65)
a mini rice set with 3 types of toppings, coupled with miso soup. 3 toppings are 3 of the most famous food in hokkaido - uni (sea urchin), crab and ikura (salmon eggs). the ikura is the best, very different from what is sold here which is preserved in lots of salt. the ikura is hakodate tastes very light and each eggs pops open when you bite into it.


2) Fish tei-shoku (1,050yen, sin$13.65)
we both ordered a fish set meal each. the fish portion was humongous. and it was the best tasting fish i have ever eaten. the meat was fresh and succulent and very light. mmm~~ yumyum!

3) crab cream croquette (630yen, sin$8)
ooh~ by far the most delicious cream croquette i have ever eaten. it totally puts the croquette that is sold at bugis to shame. this one has raised my standards for croquette to sky high... dun think i will eat the bugis croquette one again. haha~

Sushi

we ate sushi at otaru which is famous for its sushi. we ate at this place called "sushi yoko-cho" which looked quite good and the price range was within our budget... but the sushi was only ma-ma... i think we have better sushi locally and more worth the price as compared to what we paid in japan. this was the 2nd time i ate sushi in japan and both times i have the same thoughts. maybe a higher price range of sushi will be better but dun think i will want to try sushi out again in japan.

from top-to-bottom: ikura guntan sushi (220yen, sin$2.86), salmon sushi (250yen, sin$3.25), botan ebi sushi (880yen, sin$11.44)Remnants of our meal. Ending up ordering a set of 10 sushi for 1500yen (sin$19.50) as it seemed much more worth the price, but the sushi range was.... so-so...