Hokkaido 2012 - Furano Skiing 富良野 スキー

If you want powder snow and don't want to rub shoulder with tons of foreigners then you should try skiing in Furano. Don't take our word for it, you can check out this FT article on skiing in Hokkaido.

Hokkaido 2012 - Eating Out in Sapporo & Furano グルメ 札幌 富良野

As you probably know by now, vacation trip for mum and dad isn't quite complete without going out of their way to search for food. So lets just see what they had in Hokkaido.

Sashimi beef rice bowl (sukiyaki beef set behind)

Sashimi beef rice bowl 和牛刺身丼 from Kumagera くまげら in Furano. Slices of  locally raised beef over a bowl of hot rice topped with a small dollop of wasabi, this is the signature dish of this famous restaurant. Walked in from the freezing cold of below -10C, one bowl may not be quite enough. The melt-in-your-mouth beef is perfect complement to the slightly sweet rice.

You can develop a huge appetite after skiing from dawn till dusk. You might associate dull and tasteless offering with ski resorts' restaurants, but mum and dad just couldn't say enough good things about the restaurants within the New Furano Prince Hotel. You can see some of food they had there.

Furano beef steak rice bowl

Fried Tokachi Pork Cutlet rice bowl

炭焼処きたぐに - Sumiyaki Dokoro Kitaguni serves local produce in Izakaya style

Roast pork loin from upper Furano 上富良野ポークロース焼き

Roast Taraba Crab claws

Dim sum buffet lunch, a firm favorite with a lot of Furano locals

There are plenty of restaurants to sample in Hokkaido and if a restaurant is mentioned in one of the Hong Kong guidebooks then you shouldn't be surprised to see an even longer queue of people with quite a few Hongkongers waiting in line. That was definitely the case with Nemuro Hana Sushi in JR Stellar Place building.

Creamy swiss roll with soft ice cream inside Shiroi Koibito Coffee Shop

Botan ebi from Gourmet Tei in Sapporo Fish Market ボタン海老−北のグルメ亭

Mix seafood Chirashi again from the Sapporo Fish Market

A massive bowl of Ramen from Ichiryuan near Sapporo JR station - 一粒庵

Furano! 富良野

Furano 富良野 is famous for its lavender field in the summer and Tomita Farm ファーム富田 is perhaps the most well known. We shall just let the picture do the talking.

While the bumble bee worked hard for the honey......,

mum worked hard on the camera!!

Lavender Cream Puff ラベンダーシュークリーム - Our favorite too!!

En route to Furano

The heavy rain stopped. As they drove towards their next destination, Furano, the sky started to brighten. The contrast in weather was uplifting. The drive from Otaru 小樽 to Furano 富良野 was just under 3 hours and they made pit-stops whenever there was anything exciting en route.

The first stop was Sandan Taki 三段滝, which literally means 3-step waterfall. It wasn't a planned stop, so they haven't seen any photos or description of the place before.

Shortly after the waterfall pit-stop, they made another unplanned stop at an Rokkatei outlet just outside Furano. Guess mum couldn't wait for another 6 days before they would get to its main store in Obihiro　帯広. With a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out to rows and rows of grape vines, the place was reminiscent of vineyards in Napa Valley and New Zealand. This outlet even got a decidedly fancy name, Campana della Vigna, カンパーナ六花亭.　http://www.rokkatei.co.jp/facilities/campana.html

The fresh grape soft ice cream looked decidedly yummy!! It was one of the special items limited to the Campana shop made from the locally produced Furano grape juice.ぶどうソフトー 富良野産ぶどう果汁を使ったソフトクリーム。