Day #8: Sapporo

June 28th, Saturday was the day Mom had been looking forward to.  She would be leaving the tour to spend the day with her sister and brother-in-law who came all the way from Sendai to be with her.  When their son, Ricky learned many months ago that we would be coming to Japan on a tour and not stopping in Sendai to visit, he arranged to have his parents come up to Hokkaido.  Mom was thrilled!

Art, Dennis and I stayed with the tour.  I knew that it would make things easier for everybody since neither Dennis nor Art speak Japanese and my aunt and uncle don't speak English.

Our first stop was to the Hokkaido shrine.

We've seen many shrines in Japan so this wasn't too awesome for us.

We knew Mom would be having a great time since my uncle was a reporter, editor and then managed a tour company.  I gave him my small camera to take photos for me.

We did enjoy seeing this wedding.  The bride is wearing a white tsunokakushi on her head to hide the "horns of jealousy".

Mom went to see a lot of gardens, museums, etc. and had fabulous food.  Hmmm... I'm getting hungry looking at this photo.  They visited places that would be of interest to people from Japan rather than tourists from Hawaii.

From all the photos that uncle took I saw that the sisters were walking arm in arm everywhere they went.

Mom is the oldest sister, Auntie is the youngest.  They write each other constantly, but there's nothing like seeing each other in person and spending quality time together.

We went to this Duty Free shop where our tour guide, Michael recommended this herbal medicine called Seirogan.  He said it was a miracle cure for upset stomach.  He didn't mention at the time that it had a rather strong, noxious odor.  We bought two boxes for our son and son-in-law.

I wonder if they've tried it yet.

I also bought this nifty stainless steel nail clipper that collects the nails that snip off.

 Lunch at Miyabi restaurant was something completely new and fun.  We got to dip seafood and veggies in batter and deep fry our own tempura.  It was delicious!

We stopped at this government building.  It was constructed in 1888 and is of American neo-baroque style.  It is nicknamed "Aka-Renga" (red bricks).


I enjoyed the lily pond on the office grounds.

I was feeling a bit silly when Dennis took this photo.

The Asahi Brewery was more fun than I thought it was going to be.  I got to buy a clear beer mug for my collection.

We also got to sample waaay more beer than we needed to.

I don't even remember what I liked the best. Heck!  I don't even remember what I drank.

Juuust kidding!

I wrote it all down.  We had Super dry, Premium, Dark and Super Cold.  

But no, I don't remember what I liked best.

We also made a stop at a 100 Yen (Dollar) store.  That was my FAVORITE store!

We had a crab dinner here which was better since we could warm our crab on the grill even though that's not what the grill was intended for.

When we got back to our hotel, my aunt and uncle had just returned with Mom.  Mom was ecstatic!  She'd had such a great time.  

Auntie laughed when she saw the Seirogan we'd bought.  She said she was very familiar with the upset stomach cure and said it was even good for toothaches.  Seriously?

We spent a wonderful time together just chatting until it was time for them to return to their hotel.  

It was a lovely day... and there was only one more day left in Hokkaido.