Day 2: Visiting the Sapporo TV Tower and Otokoyama Sake Park

Hmmm... I think we were the last ones to show up for breakfast... again...

However, we were able to join Dana, Rebecca, Jon, Lynn, Kay and Dareld for breakfast. Although Dana, Rebecca, Jon and Lynn were friends who had joined the tour together, Kay and Dareld had come in from California on their own. They are from Hawaii but had relocated to California like we did to Chicago decades ago although we moved back to Hawaii almost 20 years ago. 

We discovered we had a lot in common with Kay and Dareld besides Kay and me sharing our names. Kay also reminded me so much of our daughter, Tiffany and Dareld was like our son-in-law, Ed. Kay also dealt with helping people like Tiffany does now.

Our first stop was the Sapporo TV Tower. By the way, it was 22 degrees outside and the streets were lined with tall mountains of snow which were continuously having to be hauled away in trucks.

It was rather astonishing seeing how far we had walked the night before.

Here's our Hawaii escort, Micah with our Japan Tohoku escort, Kuni.

They are both flashing the Hawaiian "shaka" sign which signifies friendship and aloha.

Going from the Sapporo TV Tower to our next stop was tricky. 

We were in the second row behind the driver and I wondered if he could see a lot better than me. 

This was rather spooky. But strangely, I wasn't worried like I would be if we were driving in Chicago.

Our bus tour guide, Miyuki passed out these snacks along with tea and coffee to everybody. 

It was a long ride and by the time we got to our rest stop, it was around 2:30. We had a hamburger lunch with Kay and Dareld. We knew they were going to be the most wonderful travel companions for this trip. I suspect, Micah or Kuni arranged to often have us at the same table.

We arrived at the Otokoyama Sake Park. The kanji character for otoko means man and yama means mountain. It must be someone's name.

There was a sake tasting area, but we opted to try the:

"soft serve ice cream made with Otokoyama's special pure rice fermented syrup (very sweet). No sugar. No alcohol. No caffeine." 

My regular bloggers know that I've lost much of my sense of taste, but Art agreed it wasn't all that... uuuummmm... great...

Maybe we should have tried the sake. 😁 Art says it might have warmed us more than the soft serve. 😂

We then had to drive through even more terrible snowy conditions to get to our Hotel Route Inn in Asahikawa which is Hokkaido's 2nd largest city.

Our dinner was at Restaurant Minori  which was actually very good. It was even more wonderful sitting with Kay and Dareld. They have also traveled the world, and we had fun discussing our adventures.

It was another interesting day and we looked forward to Day 3.