Biei - Asahikawa - Sapporo (Part 1) Believe me, waking up at 3.45am after a long day is a heroic task. BUT the series of photos in this post is probably the best out of all the days.

And rushing out to the car in a bid to catch the sunrise is equally commendable. But in that rush I forgot to bring out my tripod as well as the 70-300 lens. :P And surprise, surprise, the husband/owner actually was up to let us out of the door! Man... I felt so bad. Working hard the whole day and still have to wake at 3-4am is just torture.

Anyway, so I stepped on the accelerator pronto, and rushed to the nearest photogenic spot indicated by the map given to us by the kind owners of Tomte Rum. Unfortunately because we did not have the time to stake out the places beforehand, we weren't able to find any spots with spectacular sunrise before the sun rose. -_-"


After taking the previous photo we drove on to the nearest tree. Heh... the Biei region is actually famous for "trees". The trees will be named and become a tourist attraction! Haha... for some background, actually a lot of stunning tree-sceneries are taken here at Biei because the trees fit so well into the surroundings. So this tree we went to is the Tree of Seven Stars. Not so sure about the meaning of the name, but you can probably research on it online. Another observation is that the trees are all botak (bald)! It would have been better to see such trees in the winter with snow all around it. Or alternatively in summer when the trees would be lush green in color. So actually spring is not such a good time to visit Biei. :P


Then we drove up the hill to see this place where the owner said (in his humble opinion) is his favourite spot. Well indeed it is stunning, but as before I think summer/winter would be the best. Along the way there we also saw the Tree of Ken & Mary. Initially we had some difficulty finding this tree coz we couldn't find 2 trees near each other. Eventually, we realized Mary is actually "hiding" right beside Ken. Because Ken is so big, it hid Mary. Haha... For those who are going there, it's right beside the Pension of Ken & Mary. KS also said he saw cows blowing steam out of their nostrils...




And finally, we had to return back for our breakfast, we saw this fox near our pension! Didn't have my 70-300 lens on so the below photo was the best I could do. It was actually running across the road, running towards the distance and then turning back and stared at us. Then it just kept running to and fro until eventually it disappeared.



Since we had some time, we explored the hill behind the pension. The owner was walking his dog behind there and dunno why the dog suddenly sprinted towards me. Anyway there was a lone tree there as well, and no prize to guess that it's the Tomte Rum Tree. Hehe...



Ok back inside the pension, we packed our stuff and felt kinda nostalgic. Next was breakfast where they let you choose between 2 time slots. 7.30am and 8am. We chose the former. Can see the breakfast spread below and the items which stood out were the rolls and the asparagus. The bread was so light and fragrant and the asparagus had this nutty taste which was totally unique! A healthy and filling breakfast to start the day. Oh and free flow of Hokkaido milk, orange juice and coffee. Of coz everyone there drank copious amount of milk. One lady even added a tiny bit of coffee in her milk to make coffee flavored milk. Oh the yoghurt with jam seems like a very Jap thingy. Last time in my Jap fren's house I also saw his father adding jam to plain yoghurt and mixing the whole thing up.






OK, finally it was time to leave. I bought a bottle of Tomte Rum labelled beer from them too. Oh yeah before we left we wanted to visit the "bread factory" (a tiny cottage) just next door but of all days it had to rest on that day. FYI, they get their bread from this factory. So we all took photos together outside the pension. Then we packed our stuff into the car and bade farewell with tears welling (nearly). The owners waved to us even as we drove off into the horizon. I knew then that I had to return to Biei/Furano and Tomte Rum one day (hopefully twice, in winter and summer :P).

Along the road again, we headed towards Furano. Destination, the famous Farm Tomita. I am sure you all have seen photos of lavender fields before and more likely than not it is from Farm Tomita. Something like this:

But what we saw was this (LOL):



It was pretty empty when we reached, no doubt due to the low season. There were some colorful flowers around but the majority of the flowers have not bloomed yet. There was a greenhouse though, and inside we got to see real lavender in bloom. Wow...

To be continued...  F-ed by me at 10:36 AM

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