Yummy kamameshi @ Fukutei, New Chitose Airport (Hokkaido, Japan)

It has only been two months since we were in Japan, yet I already miss it so. Especially the dining experience - the ever polite greeting and excellent service, the oshibori (wet towel, warm in winter, cold in summer) to refresh and clean, and the consistently excellent quality of ingredients. We can experience that same level of Japanese dining experience in Hong Kong too, but at a dear price. We ate this seafood meal at the airport just prior to boarding the plane back to Hong Kong. We wanted to eat one last Japanese meal before we departed, and we had to walk from the International Terminal to the Domestic Terminal before we found some traditional Japanese restaurants. We chose Fukutei because there wasn't a wait for a table (we were kinda in a hurry), and it was a decent choice. There are several Fukutei restaurants around Hokkaido, and this particular one specialised in seafood and kamameshi ("kettle rice"), a type of rice dish cooked in an iron pot called kama. Service was brisk and efficient, and we were in and out with plenty of time to make our way back to the international terminal for our flight. The food was delicious, and I wish we could enjoy such meals regularly without breaking the bank!

Oyster and Scallops Kamameshi (1460yen) with a bowl of miso soup, hot dashi in a thermal flask and various toppings (nori, green onion, wasabi and sesame seeds). I ate half the kamameshi as it was in the pot, and then ate the remaining half as an ochazuke with the dashi and toppings:

Plump oyster and scallops on a flavourful rice base:

Ginshari Prawn Tempura (1940yen), included miso soup and rice (ginshari ("silver rice") is the Japanese term for white rice). I don't like deep fried foods, but I do appreciate that tempura are crispy without being too greasy:

All trips must come to an end, but we made sure we ended this trip on a belly full of Japanese seafood!

Fukutei
3rd Floor
Domestic Terminal Building
New Chitose Airport
Tel. +81 (123) 25 8222

Asahiyama Zoo, Ashikawa (Hokkaido, Japan)

Hello from sunny California! Our family is on vacation for the next week or so in the US, so expect blog updates to be scarce until I get back home. I promise to share photos of our California trip, but for now, here are some photos of snowy Japan from our trip last month to Hokkaido. After a few days of skiing and snowboarding in Furano, we headed north to Asahikawa to visit the famous Asahiyama Zoo. This is Japan's northernmost zoo, and it is most well-known for the daily Penguin Walk during the winter season (twice a day from December to February, and once daily during March). We were there to see the arctic animals, and we were quite surprised to see emus (yes, the Aussie birds!) on exhibition out in the snow! They seemed to cope as well as the other winter animals, so it didn't seem cruel (the tropical animals were housed indoors under appropriately warm conditions).

Finally get to see a real live tanuki (Japanese raccoon dog), many years after I first heard about this legendary animal:

Elegant Japanese cranes:

A young doe:

A snowy owl that was very well-camouflaged in the snow, and it did take us awhile to spot it:

The Penguin Walk! It was the main event that most visitors to the zoo wanted to see:

Apparently, the Penguin Walk is a measure to keep obesity at bay during the winter months when the penguins are not so active. Really cute to see them waddle down the pathway out of their enclosure:

One of the polar bears at the zoo:

Family photo fun:

Jumbo sushi @ Fukuzushi, Furano (Hokkaido, Japan)

Japan is the land of delicious sushi, so it was only natural to enjoy delicious sushi during our ski/snowboard trip last month to Japan. The sushi at Fukuzushi goes one step further to offer the option of upgrading (for free) to 'jumbo size', though this just means extra sushi rice and the protein portion remains the same as the regular size. However, to the Japanese, sushi is all about the rice, so this sushi-ya is rather popular with both the Japanese and the foreigners for whom the word 'jumbo-sized sushi' (for free!) appears to be the draw. Hubby and I focus more on the quality rather than the quantity of food, and the sushi/sashimi at Fukuzushi are excellent. All the tables on the ground floor were fully reserved when we walked in, and we were shown to one of the tatami rooms upstairs. Service was as you would expect from Japanese people - polite and helpful - and Fukuzushi caters well to English-speaking foreigners by providing an English menu. As we communicated with staff in (broken) Japanese, I cannot comment on their English speaking ability, but I am sure there is at least one staff who can communicate in English well. We ordered our usual favourites, and enjoyed them all!

We were the first ones in this tatami room, but the other two tables were filled by the time we left:

Oyakodon (864yen) for the kids to share. Always a good choice for the young ones:

Unaju (1404yen), or unadon (eel rice bowl) served in a jubako (lacquered food boxes). We also ordered this for the kids but hubby ate most of it as unagi is one of his favourite Japanese food:

Hubby's Extra Special Sushi Set (3456yen), jumbo-sized. There was double the usual amount of rice, and the serving size of the toppings was generous too. Included ikura (salmon roe), uni (sea urchin), shrimp, hotate (scallop), kani (crab), akagai (ark shell clam), crunchy kazunoko (herring roe) and chuutoro (medium fatty tuna belly):

My Premium Chirashi (1944yen), with similar toppings to hubby's Extra Special Sushi Set but with salmon, tobiko (flying fish roe) and tamagoyaki (egg omelet). Delicious!

Green Tea Ice Cream (378yen), a safe choice for dessert:

Shiratama Zenzai (sweet rice balls with anko (red bean paste), 378yen). A delicious and light dessert:

Fukuzushi gets our thumbs ups!

Fukuzushi
1-24 Asahimachi,
Furano, Hokkaido
Japan 076-0026
Tel. +81 167-23-2617

Izakaya dinner @ Kitaguni, New Furano Prince Hotel (Hokkaido, Japan)

On our recent ski/snowboard trip in Japan, hubby and I tried skiing for the first time, doing a lesson together with our 6-year-old. Skiing is very different to snowboarding, and I found skiing is not so hard on the body and joints like snowboarding is. At the end of our first day on the slopes, we had an early dinner at another restaurant in the hotel, this time a casual izakaya at the basement. Kitaguni was a popular one, fully booked on our arrival day, so I made an advanced booking for the following evening. We were given a private tatami room, which was a real nice treat because our two kids can be noisy and rowdy (I'm sure the fact we had two kids on our booking was most probably the reason why we were given a private room!). Service was friendly, and once again staff showed good consideration after being told of our boy's allergies, even coming into the room several times to triple-check with us. The menu offered a large variety of dishes, and affordably priced. For the sake of ease and simplicity, hubby and I opted for the two dinner set courses (named Kitaguni (5200yen) and Furano (2980yen), and ordered a dish for the boy. The food was delicious and well-prepared with choice ingredients.

Kitaguni features an open kitchen:

Getting comfortable in our tatami room (kids were crawling all over, hence no one in the shot):

Hubby and I both had yuzu (a type of citrus) drinks - yuzu shu (liquer) for him, and yuzu sour (a cocktail):

Both the dinner sets were supposed to come with an appetiser, but it appears that we were never served our appetisers - something I only noticed while working on the photos. We were pretty satisfied with what we had, and didn't even know we were missing any courses!

The sashimi course on the Kitaguni set included a shrimp:

The Furano set sashimi course - sweet scallops, yellowtail and some kind of mochi-like discs that was quite nice:

Broiled Chicken and Potato with Cheese (890yen) for the boy. This was quite a rich dish with all that cheese, and delicious:

Both the Kitaguni and Furano courses included Broiled Atka Mackerel (half hokke), with a slightly sweet soy sauce glazing:

The hot dish in the Kitaguni course was Salt-steamed Pork from Kamifurano. Very tender and almost melt-in-the-mouth texture:

The Furano set's hot dish was a mini version of the Broiled Chicken and Potato with Cheese:

The more pricy Kitaguni set included Steamed Taraba Crab...

...as well as a few fried foods - Octopus Fries and Skewered Fries:

The Kitaguni course finished up with Pressed Salmon Sushi and miso soup:

The Furano set concluded with a Salmon Roe Rice bowl and miso soup:

This izakaya located on the basement of the New Furano Prince Hotel is a good affordable option for hotel dining.

Kitaguni
B1 Level
New Furano Prince Hotel
Nakagoryo
Furano, Hokkaido
Japan 076-8511
Hotel Tel.: +81 (0)167-23-8915

Skiing!

Greetings from a very snowy location in Japan! We are currently on our ski/snowboard trip in Furano (our second time here because we loved our first trip five years ago so much!), and I will be offline for a week while we enjoy the sweet powder snow! For now, here are a couple of photos of our 6-year-old boy on his very first day of skiing:

Delicious Seafood @ Umi no Hana, Furano (Hokkaido)

Hokkaido is known for its high quality seafood (amongst other things), so naturally seafood had to be on our agenda during our Hokkaido trip. For our final night in Furano, even though we were tired from snowboarding all day (and I was also nursing a concussion from a bad fall on the slopes), we headed out again to downtown Furano for dinner at Umi no Hana for a seafood dinner. Umi no Hana (translates to "flower of the sea") is a Japanese restaurant serving sushi and seafood, and although only a little English is spoken, there is a hand-drawn and coloured A3-sized menu in English to help foreigners with ordering the food. Serving sizes are pretty small, but that meant that we got to taste a large variety of food. Good quality ingredients were used, and the seafood was fresh and tasty, as to be expected for the prices of the dishes.

Sashimi items: Ama-ebi ("sweet prawn", my favourite sashimi) and Kani (crab):

Non-seafood dishes: Kakuni (braised fatty pork belly) and Vegetable Tempura (it was one of the items on the daily menu):

Cooked seafood: Garlic Butter Squid and Butter Scallop - both were cooked perfect (i.e. not overcooked!), and the scallops in particular was lovely, fresh and juicy:

Steamed Oysters - I really enjoyed these even though they weren't au naturale (which is my favourite way to eat oysters):

Sushi items: Uni (sea urchin roe/gonads) and Tsubugai (whelk, a type of sea snail) - the uni was soft, sweet and creamy whereas the tsubugai was slightly crunchy. Both were delicious!

We were pretty satisfied with the food, but there were a couple of things we weren't too happy about. There was a charge of 400 yen per person to order alcohol, but we weren't informed about it until I saw it on the receipt - my problem isn't that we had to pay it, but that it was snuck upon us. There was also quite a lengthy wait between dishes, and the restaurant was barely even half full. Overall, it was a pretty good dining experience, with good food, and most important of all, the waitstaff were accommodating to our little one.

Jingisukan BBQ @ Tirol, Furano (Hokkaido)

After snowboarding the whole afternoon after arriving at the ski resort in Furano, we were tired, but decided to head out of the hotel for dinner. Since the resort was located about 10 minutes from downtown Furano, we caught the Downtown Shuttle to Tirol Lamb Barbecue, adjacent to a small western-style inn operated by the same people. Tirol serves Jingisukan (i.e. "Genghis Khan"), lamb grilled on a dome-shaped barbecue plate. This dish is so-named because the people generally associates lamb with the Mongolians, and the shape of the cooking grill resembles the Mongolian soldiers' helmets which the soldiers apparently used to cook their food,

Tirol Lamb BBQ, below the Cafe and next to the inn; and the menu and instructions on how to enjoy Jingisukan barbecue, in English:

Tirol is a warm, cozy eatery with friendly and smiling waitresses, offering hot comfort food - the perfect refuge beckoning to cold travellers in the snowy world outside. One table was taken up by a couple of Australian guys, and a short while after our arrival, another table was filled with six Australian men in their fifties or sixties, coincidentally also from Perth! These Aussies were in Furano for (almost) the same reason as us - the ski slopes. There were a few things on the menu, and we knew what we wanted so we didn't take long to decide. Honey and Rob are big fans of lamb, and poor guys are deprived in Japan where for the most part, lamb is hard to get. Their meal choice was a no-brainer, and both of them got the Tirol Set which includes both the lamb loin and shoulder cuts, vegetables, kimchi (Korean pickles), rice, gelato and tea. The barbecue items come with a homemade sauce with a choice of non-spicy (sweet), "middle spicy" or "very spicy". When our waitress saw that we couldn't decide which sauce we wanted, she said she'd bring out all three for us to try. All three went well with the barbecue lamb and veges, and just as we suspected, the "very spicy" sauce barely left a tingle. Rob and my sister enjoyed the barbecued lamb.

The uncooked ingredients; and the lamb meat and vegetables assembled as per instruction and cooking on the dome-shaped grill plate:

The Stone-baked Curry looked interesting, so I ordered the chicken version as well as additional vegetables for the barbecue to ensure that we got our sufficient nutrition during the trip. The Japanese curry came out bubbling in a hot stone bowl containing tender chicken pieces and pumpkin slices on top of a bed of rice, with a cheese topping that had been browned very nicely. It's very much a comfort food, and I quite enjoyed it. I think Japanese-style curry is starting to grow on me.
After our meal, we shared Chocolate Gelato and Matcha Gelato (green tea) which came with Rob's and Honey's sets, and they were delicious indeed.

Stone-baked curry:

We had a nice experience at Tirol, and if you're ever in Furano, I definitely recommend this little eatery for a Jingisukan meal.

Snowboarding trip, Furano (Hokkaido)

After spending the afternoon and evening looking at the beautiful snow and ice sculptures at the Yuki Matsuri, we stayed for only one night in Sapporo before heading out very early the next morning to Furano for our snowboarding trip. It was a 3-hour bus ride from Sapporo, but we were glad that I'd chosen this ski region rather than the very popular Niseko, because crowd wasn't much of a problem in Furano (especially during the Yuki Matsuri when most visitors would be including a ski trip in their trip itinerary to Hokkaido). I would love to also try out one of Niseko ski resorts because it is considered and voted one of the world's top 10 ski resorts. Furano is gaining popularity though, and I'm sure it won't be long before it will rival Niseko's fame.

The beautiful view of the snowscape from our hotel room window. The shots were taken behind the window pane, so don't mind the reflections (Honey did open the window to take photos, but couldn't shut it again so we had to embarassingly call one of the staff to help) - click image for larger view:

We stayed at a ski-in-ski-out resort, which made it easy to take turns looking after Zak, and everyone could have a turn at snowboarding. The slopes had amazing powder, and I can see why Hokkaido is such a favourite destination for skiers. Aussie skiers must really like Japan, because we bumped into a lot of Australians both here in Furano and in Hakuba (Nagano) on our first snowboarding trip. The three of us enjoyed snowboarding, particularly Rob who did well not falling over as much as Honey or I did! Photos were taken using Honey's compact point-and-shoot.

Rob and me geared up and ready to go; and Honey and I on the ski lift:

Rob preparing his rental snowboard; and then having loads of fun snowboarding: