Hokkaido Summer Trip 2017 Day 4 (4/6/17)

To do something different from the previous trip, I decided to venture to Biei from Asahikawa. It is too early to go further down to Furano for the flowers as flowers are not blooming yet. Actually it is also too early to see the farm harvesting in Biei, but I read from online reviews that people do tour around the small town on electric bicycles and I decided it is something refreshing for us. Mum cycles very often and I guess she'll like this. I googled online and found this bicycle rental place offering guided tour so I emailed to them and got a confirmation for a half day tour. I chose a earlier tour so that we can still have the afternoon free to go to the zoo if we decided to do the trip today.

Taking the local train (very short carriages) to Biei

As the tour starts at 9.30am and it takes 40min to travel to Biei, I dragged myself up by 8am to prepare for the train ride at 8.46am. There were tourists from PRC and taiwan after we board the train. Mum brought a cup of hot coffee from the hotel and we also dropped by Delifrance to pick up some bread to eat along the way. When I woke up at 4am ahead of my alarm clock earlier, it showed Biei and Asahikawa raining although there was no rain when I looked out of the window, so I brought my down jacket along. After receiving the confirmation email, I did not hear anything from the tour vendor and did not pay anything, so I was crossing my fingers. The cycling tour is also something I had been looking forward to for this trip.

Biei Station

When we reached Biei, it was super cold and drizzling a little. I was really thankful that I had my down jacket with me. It was a small and very quiet town with not that many people on the streets. I followed the instructions on the website and I was glad that I managed to find the shop after crossing the overhead bridge to get across the railway. I could see that it was just a small standalone shop and the owners were waiting for us to turned up. There was row of bicycles outside and no other patrons in sight, so I guess we were the only ones going for the tour this cold windy morning.

Mum and our guide getting our bicycles ready

The vendors and the guide checked with us a few times if we wanted to go ahead with the trip as it was really cold. Mum and I decided to bite the bullet and see how far we could go before we have to cancel our adventure. The kind owners also offered me a pair of gloves, it was another lifesaver and earlier I had even thought that Mum was too kiasu to wear gloves in summer! The guide taught us how we should operate the electric assisted bicycles and I also warmed up a little by cycling around the area. I was wobbling a little at first but slowly got used to things once we started the trip.

The patchwork area of Biei (Ken and Mary trees behind)

Our guide named Tommy spoke good English for a Japanese and we encountered very steep slopes going uphill for quite awhile after we started our journey. I would say that it is really necessary to rent a electric assisted bicycle in this area as our legs were just a little tired from all that cycling up. We came to this area with many people taking photographs at two trees (supposedly to be famous during to an old Japanese advertisement) and the area was also filled with different plants waiting to harvesting, forming a patchwork of different green. It was quite cold and windy but I still marveled at the nice scenery in front of me. We stopped to take some photographs.

The patchwork area

Ken and Mary trees

The next place we stopped was at a french bakery that also hosted a neat restaurant. We requested to go in to buy some bread to try as Mum also needed a toilet break. The warmth of the place was a welcome relief from the cold wind whipping my hair on my face. Perhaps we were really hungry, the two pieces of bread we bought were really good! I read about the restaurant on TripAdvisor and I guess its listed as the top few in Biei.

Really cool french bakery and cafe

The rain came down harder after we left the bakery and Tommy checked with us if we wanted to continue. We still felt comfortable coming equipped with thick jacket and raincoat so we decided to go on. It was about an hour into our guided tour. After that, we cycled around the place and Tommy showed us some other famous 'trees', made famous by advertisements again and there were really people who earnestly took photographs there. I was glad that we did not opt for the taxi tour as the price is also quite steep to do that and it felt silly to stop just to take photographs with these trees. 

Parent and child tree from a distance

Tommy also pointed out the vegetables we saw on the field, like lines of potatoes, beet sugar plants, onions and wheat. After a while, we were just cycling up and down around these fields which looked pretty much the same. The feeling were very serene and it really could have been better if it was not raining. As we soon realised that the scenery were getting repetitive, we requested to head back around 11am as it was raining harder and getting quite cold. I'm sure glad that the rain did not pour down heavily like the first day in Sapporo and we were still able to make it that far into the tour. 

The seven stars tree from some distance

When we reached the shop, it was already 11.35am, so we only lost about 20-30min of touring time. We did not mind that as we had already seen enough. Tommy apologised for the rain but I sincerely thanked him for taking us out on a day with such a weather. Temperature for the whole day was around 7-8 degrees but from tomorrow onwards, the sun will be out and temp will rise to more than 20 degrees. So its really our luck when it come to weather. The train was already waiting when we reached the station, we quickly hop on and the journey back to Asahikawa felt so much faster. 

Interesting honest shop when farmers just leave their produce for sale

We decided that we deserve a good treat for our good effort this morning, so its finally Kani Honke time! After a very cold morning, I was craving for something hot and soupy so we ordered a Snow and King Crab sukiyaki and Mum ordered another set meal that comes with many small dishes like crab miso, boiled crab legs, crab porridge etc. The food quality and service was as good as I remembered it and we found it worth every bucks we spent. The plus point about the Asahikawa outlet was that it was not so crowded and there was no queue when we went during the weekend lunch hours.

Food is served! 

We took this pic balancing the phone on a bag lolz

When the server came in with the food, we get her help to take pic

It was only 2pm when we finished the sumptuous meal, but Mum was not keen to tour the zoo, so we decided to head back to our hotel room. I was also happy with this decision as I can get a nap after waking up early this morning. We only went out to the shopping street for a short walk again at 5pm, more shops were still opened unlike the previous day but there was still nothing much to see and buy. We only stopped at a small shop selling local produce to get a green tea ice cream, and then we headed to the supermarket once again to get some food for dinner. I dont really have any special craving by this time and felt a bit sick of the fresh seafood don or sashimi so we did not get any. We tried other food stuff like their preserved vegetables and some salad, food that I had missed eating the past few days.

Visiting this guy and his cat in the rain instead of snow

Sunset view from my hotel room

Before it was 7pm, we were once again back in our hotel room and ready to rest for the night. I sat at the desk to update the blog, went to the onsen (surprisingly only a few people around 9pm) and came back to finish one episode of the Korean drama Goblin (I had been watching it on and off since last year December). I prefer the onsen here as its always less crowded compared to the one at Keihan and there's two onsen areas (indoor and outdoor). Mum was getting ready to sleep when I got back to the room at 9pm but I was wide awake till midnight due to the inactivity and the nap I took earlier.