Tag: photos

Canada, Photography, Travel

Bus Tour 5 – In the Town of Banff

Banff is not a very large town. It sits within the much larger Banff National Park. The town limits are set and are not allowed to expand beyond its current limits, lest it creeps into the national park.

We had finished our afternoon of touristy cliches, we were left to our own devices to for the whole evening. The stores along Banff Avenue would be closing up soon. It was a Sunday evening, so we had to work quick if we were to get a little window/real shopping in for the day.

Shopping along Banff Avenue

Continue reading “Bus Tour 5 – In the Town of Banff”

HenryLeave a comment
Photography, Vancouver

WorldWide InstaMeet 11 (#WWIM11) with @InstameetVancouver

I was really happy to have participated in the past weekend’s WorldWide InstaMeet, or WWIM. This was my first Instameet and it was the 11th iteration of the WWIM. We went to the airport. There were 120 of us and we had a grand old time. I’ll let the photos below tell the story. Some great photos in there.

Continue reading “WorldWide InstaMeet 11 (#WWIM11) with @InstameetVancouver”

HenryLeave a comment
food, Intercultural Encounters, Japan, Photography, Travel

Eating my way around Hokkaido – 6

This may (or may not) be the last entry in Eating my way around Hokkaido. This time around I look more at some of the last of my random meals across this northern Japanese island.

Sukiya

Sukiya meal

Sukiya is a “fast-food” Japanese restaurant in the same vein as Matsuya and Yoshinoya. Sukiya is best known to me for their beef rice bowls. My wife had an obsession to eat at these type of restaurants while we were in Sapporo. It’s not fancy food by any stretch, but it is filling and economical to eat at Sukiya. Just look at the side dishes that came along with my simple beef rice bowl. Tasty, cheap and quick.

Continue reading “Eating my way around Hokkaido – 6”

HenryLeave a comment
food, Intercultural Encounters, Japan, Photography, Travel

Eating my way around Hokkaido – 5

Eating my way around Hokkaido continues with another round of meals. It’s a review of things eaten within my fourth and last week in Sapporo.

Genghis Khan BBQ (Jingisukan)

After our onsen day trip up at Jozankei, we had returned to Sapporo and hopped off the bus in Susukino in search of dinner. We had wandered for quite a bit looking for food when we stumbled upon a place serving Genghis Khan BBQ, or jingisukan, as it is known in Japanese. It’s basically mutton grilled on a large convex dome grill along with other veggies and meat. Mutton, though, is the primary ingredient in the set up.

jingisukan time

Continue reading “Eating my way around Hokkaido – 5”

HenryLeave a comment
food, Intercultural Encounters, Japan, Photography, Travel

Eating my way around Hokkaido – 4

Here’s number 4 in my posts on Eating my way around Hokkaido. This time, I’m focusing on the food places that I went to with my shared house mates.

Butadon Ippin [十勝豚丼いっぴん]

One of the great things about staying at our shared house was meeting all the different people. Luckily, most of us got along really well. So a big group of us went out for dinner one night at this pork rice bowl restaurant called Kotachi Butadon Ippin, or 十勝豚丼いっぴん in Japanese. It’s a chain of restaurants in Hokkaido specializing in just pork rice bowls.

Butadon Ippin in Sapporo’s Higashi Ward

Continue reading “Eating my way around Hokkaido – 4”

HenryLeave a comment
food, Intercultural Encounters, Japan, Photography, Travel

Eating my way around Hokkaido – 3

Time for the third installment of Eating my way around Hokkaido. 

Afternoon dessert at the Sapporo Sweets Cafe

I heard about this wonderful underground dessert cafe on YouTube just before I left for Sapporo. Somebody had posted an entire episode of Journeys in Japan featuring Sapporo. The Sapporo guide for this episode is a fellow Canadian, Isis, who moved to Sapporo many years ago and is now a DJ and a TV show host.

My wife and I ended up going one afternoon after classes with one of our classmates. We had a free afternoon and I had wanted to visit the Sapporo Sweets Cafe. I had a little trouble finding the place. The underground city in Sapporo is quite large and all the shops seem to look the same. When I could finally find a WiFi hotspot, we were able to locate exactly where the Sweets Cafe was.

Desserts at the Sapporo Sweets Cafe

Continue reading “Eating my way around Hokkaido – 3”

HenryLeave a comment
Japan, Nature, Photography, Travel

富良野 Furano – the Blue Pond, More Flower Farms, and Shops in the Forest

After being awed by the lavender fields of Farm Tomita, we were on our way again. However, I had no idea what our next stop was. I don’t remember ever receiving a travel itinerary. We were in the hands and at the whims of our two accompanying teachers from Hokkaido Japanese Language School. It turns out that our next stop on our highway coach field trip was to the Blue Pond, or Aoiike (青い池).

the Blue Pond

Continue reading “富良野 Furano – the Blue Pond, More Flower Farms, and Shops in the Forest”

HenryLeave a comment
Japan, Photography, Travel

富良野 Furano – Farm Tomita

Hokkaido is famous for a few things. Hokkaido is the bread basket of Japan with farms covering much of this northernmost island in the archipelago. So Hokkaido beef and dairy are all famous products. Hokkaido is also well known for its cold and snowy winters. However, Hokkaido is also famous for its beautiful fields in the summer. In Furano, the area is famous for its colourful lavender fields that cover several farms’ fields. These lavender fields are also partly the reason we chose to spend a month in Sapporo. We were only a one-day trip away from the beautiful fields of purple.

furano map

Continue reading “富良野 Furano – Farm Tomita”

HenryLeave a comment
food, Intercultural Encounters, Japan, Photography, Travel

Eating my way around Hokkaido – 2

Here’s more food from around Hokkaido. I just put all of my smartphone food photos from our month in Hokkaido into one single folder. It came out to 141 photos and 1.4 GB worth of foodiness. Here’s a smattering in this second installment of Eating my way around Hokkaido.

Lunch at Matsuya

¥980 lunch at Matsuya

Continue reading “Eating my way around Hokkaido – 2”

HenryLeave a comment
Japan, Photography, Transit, Transportation

Sapporo Streetcar

Apart from the buses and subway system in Sapporo. There is also the Sapporo Streetcar. The Sapporo Streetcar runs in what almost looks like an L-shaped loop, but the loop is incomplete at one end. So the two termini of the line are literally two blocks apart from each other.

Looking east from the Susukino Streetcar stop

These two end stops both start in the busy Susukino district of Sapporo. Susukino is Sapporo’s entertainment district. It’s home to a whole whack of restaurants, host/hostess clubs, and other businesses of the night. Susukino is where you will also find the largest collection of neon billboards and adverts in town. This area really shines through at night.

Continue reading “Sapporo Streetcar”

HenryLeave a comment