A Day Trip to Kitami
As I mentioned in my post about Aaron’s driver’s license experience, he had to go to Kitami again for a lesson last Monday (May 29th). Since the pre-school teachers had to work during Undoukai the day before, Monday was a comp day for them. This meant I had taken the day off to be with Ridge and Holt while Aaron was in Kitami. Once we realized that we all had the day off, Aaron suggested we make it a little “day o’ adventure” for the family. So, we left Nishiokoppe at about 9:00 a.m. and headed towards Kitami.
Along the way, we stopped in a few places Aaron had discovered on his first two trips. The first place along the way was in a town called Kamiubetsu. This little town is home to an annual Tulip Festival. Apparently, Kamiubetsu used to be a big producer of these lovely flowers, until they could no longer compete with Holland. Once a money crop, the tulips now become more of a habit for the town, eventually morphing into a tourist attraction. Each year from mid-April until mid-June, the town hosts a huge “festival”. More than two million bulbs are planted on these grounds. Tourists come from miles around to walk among them, shop, and eat. For those who are truly flower-obsessed, a short helicopter trip can be bought, so that one can have a bird’s eye view of the tulips. If I read the flyer correctly, you can fly for about 10 minutes for $40.
Here are various shots of the flowers:
red tulips, white tulips
white close-up, black close-up
Higher view, Tulip shape
Yellow,etc., Helicopter
More red tulips, Red/orange tulips
Ridge posing
We wandered amongst the flowers for a bit, and then moved on to check out the museum. The outside is really eye-catching and unusual. Inside, it was surprisingly small. We enjoyed walking around, though. The architecture was beautiful.
Outside shot
Inside shot of the celing
Inside view with Holt
After about an hour in Kamiubestsu, we loaded back up into the car to proceed onward.
Our next stop was about another hour away in another small city by the name of . This is the home of “Cha Cha World,” another wooden museum. The Komu is billed as a wooden museum, but you can see from my many photos that it is really more of a playground and workshop than a museum. Cha Cha world really was a wooden toy museum. They had a wonderful collection from all around the world. Though we couldn’t read the information, we nonetheless enjoyed looking at the toys. The upper floor contained a small play area in which the boys happily played for quite some time.
Cha Cha World!
The play house
The Climbing structure
In these photos, you can see them riding the biggest rocking horses I’ve ever seen. Ridge really loved it.
Ridge
Holt
We easily spent a couple of hours here, enjoying the opportunity to allow the boys some time out of the car. Finally, though, it was time to head out so Aaron would arrive in Kitami in time for his driving lesson. We dragged the boys away from the toys and piled back into the car. The drive was lovely and full of newly planted onion fields and rice paddies. Once we arrived in Kitami, Aaron showed me where the licensing office was (since I will have to jump through all the same hoops) and then took me to a large department/grocery store called Postful. Here, the boys and I killed about an hour and a half while Aaron drove around the same driving course about 30 times.
I took the opportunity to play with our new camera and took some shots of the McDonald’s located in the food court of the store. On of the sandwiches on the menu is a Shrimp Croquette. Pretty wild, eh?
McDonald's
Menu
Also, I took some shots of the little watermelons they have here. You can pick one up for 3,000 yen, or, for a bargain price of 1,500 yen if you get one of these on sale! If you don’t feel like doing the math, that comes out to between about $12 and $25 for one of these little guys.
Watermelon: full price
Watermelon: on sale
After Aaron picked us up at the store, we made one last stop for dinner. In his never ending quest for American sized portions of beef, Aaron had spotted a promising place bearing the name, “Billy the Kid”. The inside was decorated like a steak restaurant from the U.S. Well, sort of. Sorry for the blurry picture. I just had to get a shot of the wagon wheel “chandelier”. Despite my initial misgivings, Aaron was very pleased with his 500 gram steak. This is the largest portion of steak he has been able to find to date. Remember some of those restaurants you can find out in West Texas where they’ll give you an 80-ounce steak for free if you can eat it all (and the side dishes). That sort of thing is inconceivable to the Japanese.
Sign
Inside shot
Anyway, we had our fill of steak and then headed home. Thankfully, the boys slept most of the way home. Poor Aaron, though. He had to go home, go to bed, and then get up and go back to Kitami at 6:30 the following morning! Well, at least he had company for the drive to his lesson, and we all had a nice little mini-adventure.
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