Day 5
Ryan woke up with a nose bleed, which was stopped fairly quickly. It's most probably caused by the dry air. I had been religiously applying nose spray for him every night with the exception of the previous night as he had fell asleep before I could spray for him, and the repercussion was pretty immediate. Have to keep up with the nose spray.
We had bought instant noodles from 7-11 last night as today's breakfast, which takes away the problem of trying to find breakfast in the morning especially when it was snowing heavily. Ryan had not been finishing his meals over the last few days, so it was much easier to get him to finish the entire cup of instant noodles in the room, though the quantity wasn't barely enough.
Brought him back to the Asahikawa train station to continue our hunt for postal services to mail postcards back to Mom in Singapore. It has stopped snowing when we stepped out of the hotel, but the ground is already covered with fresh snow powder, probably about 5cm thick. So it made for nice photos as we crossed the road to the train station.
Found a post office and got Ryan to pen the post card to be addressed to Mummy and Rainie, and I wrote another to be sent to him. He loves receiving mail. It only costs 140 yen (about S$1.75) to mail 2 postcards back to SG
The park behind the train station was empty and covered with fresh powder, so we just ended up spending the remaining time playing in the snow before checking out of the hotel to visit the excellent Asahiyama zoo
The snow was starting to get heavier when we left the hotel, and the roads were totally covered with snow. This is the first time that I'm driving in snow covered urban roads, different from Otaru as it wasn't fully covered then.
With the advice of the rental company staff fresh in mind, I was driving much slower than the previous days, probably up to 50km/h on the straights.
At the first left turn that I had to make at a junction, I slowed down to probably about 25km/h, and the car started to skid towards another stationary car waiting on at the crossroad. Luckily, quick instincts pumped in, and I abandoned that turn, swerving back right and regained control and traction to put the car back onto a straight and quickly got out of the impending crash.
Huge lesson learnt: 25km/h is still too fast for turning on icy/snowy roads. Knock that down to 10km/h max
Slowly made our way to the famed Asahikawa Zoo. Parking was free and entrance was free for Ryan. I was expecting a really small zoo from the online reviews. True to that, it was on the small size, though the cold weather made it a slightly longer walk than 2 hours.
The penguin parade is only available later into the winter season, but seeing them upclose and through an underwater aquarium was good enough.
It was neat to see how differently the animals behave in winter. Tigers, Black bear, Polar bear, Snow Leopards, Timberwolves, etc
The only problem was that, Ryan was only interested in the snow rather than the animals, so it wasn't long before he got bored and it started to get too cold. So we shared a hot bowl of udon and a can of hot corn soup for him at the Zoo's cafe before hitting the road again to our next destination.
From this point onwards, the roads were fully covered in (fresh) snow, so the driving difficulty slowly inched up as we moved further inland
Did the dumb thing of visiting Shikisai No Oka during winter.
It is supposed to be a sea of beautiful flowers/colours, but alas, we visited at the wrong season, thus we could only see an endless sea of white powder instead, though it was enough to make the boy happy again, and he was up for another few rounds of snow-angel making again.
The only consolation for Daddy was the oiishi Lavendar soft serve ice cream, which despite the freezing temperatures, was absolutely worth it. Of course it was mainly for Daddy to eat, and I only gave Ryan a few nibbles at the ice cream and the entire cone biscuit. Gotta make sure that he doesn't catch a cold
Didn't stay for too long at the farm, and made our way to the best accommodation of the entire trip, Furano La Terre. (more on this later)
Both of us weren't really feeling hungry, so it was another quick visit to the top attraction in Furano, the picture-risque Ningle Terrace
It wasn't an easy place to navigate or drive to, as the GPS and google maps were giving conflicting instructions most of the time. However, I just persisted with Google map and it eventually brought us to the correct location, though not without much detour and wasted gas.
Ningle Terrace looks straight out of a Children Fairy tale storybook, with quaint timber cottages and workshops in the middle of a forrest, perched on top of a hill.
It was already nightfall when we reached, so the pretty lights were all up, and with the continued snow, the atmosphere was nothing short of magical - though Ryan was already getting fatigued at this point, and probably had not read his fair share of Western fairy tales to fully appreciate what he was seeing, not to mention that it was getting crazy cold..
And soon we were off in search of our dinner. Brought him to a nearby Italian restaurant for some pizza, curry rice and warm milk. I guess he probably spent more of his dinner time playing at the small play area in the restaurant rather than at the table dining with Daddy.
The drive back to the hotel was the #2 most challenging drive for me ever in my life (#1 was the extremely dangerous solo 80km Taroko Gorge ride in the middle of the night in Taiwan back in 2009). The roads leading back to the hotel had started to gather black ice, which means that it was extremely easy to skid out of control, which was evident from the car that was infront of mine. I had to be at 110% focus to just drive in a straight line at 20km/h to 30km/h, and I was still skidding most of the time.
Nonetheless it was an uneventful drive back to the fantastic Furano Le Terre.
Worth a special mention about the exceptional service and honesty.
I made an online reservation for 1 room with 2 persons, but on check-in, the reception informed me that the rate that I had paid was for 2 adults, and they proactively changed my bill to 1 adult and 1 child. Even for such an experienced traveller as me, I'm really impressed by their attention to details, and the introduction to the hotel facilities, the tips and tricks, were simply beyond 5 stars.
And there is a large inhouse onsen, which I gladly brought Ryan to experience again. Great fun and learning for him, though he is fully exhausted by the time we were done with the bath. It's always so sweet to see children sleeping naturally in such a cute pose :)
Ryan woke up with a nose bleed, which was stopped fairly quickly. It's most probably caused by the dry air. I had been religiously applying nose spray for him every night with the exception of the previous night as he had fell asleep before I could spray for him, and the repercussion was pretty immediate. Have to keep up with the nose spray.
We had bought instant noodles from 7-11 last night as today's breakfast, which takes away the problem of trying to find breakfast in the morning especially when it was snowing heavily. Ryan had not been finishing his meals over the last few days, so it was much easier to get him to finish the entire cup of instant noodles in the room, though the quantity wasn't barely enough.
Brought him back to the Asahikawa train station to continue our hunt for postal services to mail postcards back to Mom in Singapore. It has stopped snowing when we stepped out of the hotel, but the ground is already covered with fresh snow powder, probably about 5cm thick. So it made for nice photos as we crossed the road to the train station.
Found a post office and got Ryan to pen the post card to be addressed to Mummy and Rainie, and I wrote another to be sent to him. He loves receiving mail. It only costs 140 yen (about S$1.75) to mail 2 postcards back to SG
The park behind the train station was empty and covered with fresh powder, so we just ended up spending the remaining time playing in the snow before checking out of the hotel to visit the excellent Asahiyama zoo
The snow was starting to get heavier when we left the hotel, and the roads were totally covered with snow. This is the first time that I'm driving in snow covered urban roads, different from Otaru as it wasn't fully covered then.
With the advice of the rental company staff fresh in mind, I was driving much slower than the previous days, probably up to 50km/h on the straights.
At the first left turn that I had to make at a junction, I slowed down to probably about 25km/h, and the car started to skid towards another stationary car waiting on at the crossroad. Luckily, quick instincts pumped in, and I abandoned that turn, swerving back right and regained control and traction to put the car back onto a straight and quickly got out of the impending crash.
Huge lesson learnt: 25km/h is still too fast for turning on icy/snowy roads. Knock that down to 10km/h max
Slowly made our way to the famed Asahikawa Zoo. Parking was free and entrance was free for Ryan. I was expecting a really small zoo from the online reviews. True to that, it was on the small size, though the cold weather made it a slightly longer walk than 2 hours.
The penguin parade is only available later into the winter season, but seeing them upclose and through an underwater aquarium was good enough.
It was neat to see how differently the animals behave in winter. Tigers, Black bear, Polar bear, Snow Leopards, Timberwolves, etc
The only problem was that, Ryan was only interested in the snow rather than the animals, so it wasn't long before he got bored and it started to get too cold. So we shared a hot bowl of udon and a can of hot corn soup for him at the Zoo's cafe before hitting the road again to our next destination.
From this point onwards, the roads were fully covered in (fresh) snow, so the driving difficulty slowly inched up as we moved further inland
Did the dumb thing of visiting Shikisai No Oka during winter.
It is supposed to be a sea of beautiful flowers/colours, but alas, we visited at the wrong season, thus we could only see an endless sea of white powder instead, though it was enough to make the boy happy again, and he was up for another few rounds of snow-angel making again.
The only consolation for Daddy was the oiishi Lavendar soft serve ice cream, which despite the freezing temperatures, was absolutely worth it. Of course it was mainly for Daddy to eat, and I only gave Ryan a few nibbles at the ice cream and the entire cone biscuit. Gotta make sure that he doesn't catch a cold
Didn't stay for too long at the farm, and made our way to the best accommodation of the entire trip, Furano La Terre. (more on this later)
Both of us weren't really feeling hungry, so it was another quick visit to the top attraction in Furano, the picture-risque Ningle Terrace
It wasn't an easy place to navigate or drive to, as the GPS and google maps were giving conflicting instructions most of the time. However, I just persisted with Google map and it eventually brought us to the correct location, though not without much detour and wasted gas.
Ningle Terrace looks straight out of a Children Fairy tale storybook, with quaint timber cottages and workshops in the middle of a forrest, perched on top of a hill.
It was already nightfall when we reached, so the pretty lights were all up, and with the continued snow, the atmosphere was nothing short of magical - though Ryan was already getting fatigued at this point, and probably had not read his fair share of Western fairy tales to fully appreciate what he was seeing, not to mention that it was getting crazy cold..
And soon we were off in search of our dinner. Brought him to a nearby Italian restaurant for some pizza, curry rice and warm milk. I guess he probably spent more of his dinner time playing at the small play area in the restaurant rather than at the table dining with Daddy.
The drive back to the hotel was the #2 most challenging drive for me ever in my life (#1 was the extremely dangerous solo 80km Taroko Gorge ride in the middle of the night in Taiwan back in 2009). The roads leading back to the hotel had started to gather black ice, which means that it was extremely easy to skid out of control, which was evident from the car that was infront of mine. I had to be at 110% focus to just drive in a straight line at 20km/h to 30km/h, and I was still skidding most of the time.
Nonetheless it was an uneventful drive back to the fantastic Furano Le Terre.
Worth a special mention about the exceptional service and honesty.
I made an online reservation for 1 room with 2 persons, but on check-in, the reception informed me that the rate that I had paid was for 2 adults, and they proactively changed my bill to 1 adult and 1 child. Even for such an experienced traveller as me, I'm really impressed by their attention to details, and the introduction to the hotel facilities, the tips and tricks, were simply beyond 5 stars.
And there is a large inhouse onsen, which I gladly brought Ryan to experience again. Great fun and learning for him, though he is fully exhausted by the time we were done with the bath. It's always so sweet to see children sleeping naturally in such a cute pose :)
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