As promised, esteemed
friends, the first part of the Hokkaido Travelogue is now out!
It is a very
beautiful place indeed, and I made many Precious Memories there (not including offspring that I might
not have been informed of.)
Day001 - (15 Feb
2008)
Starting from KLIA, a night
flight to Osaka (Kansai airport) and transit
there to Sapporo (Chitose
airport).
2- Beginning of the journey -
before boarding the plane - at KLIA.
With my mum, who whipped* me into
the moral upstanding citizen whom you all know and love today. In
other words - thanks to her dishing out decades of painstaking behaviourial
conditioning - my future spouse would be blissfully insulated from having to
deal with a bratty kid (apart from the ones we produce.)
*Just a figure of speech. Interview
With The UltraBeast does not encourage smacking,
whipping or any other form of physical punishment (except when with informed
consent, with both parties above the age of
18)
Day002 - (16 Feb 2008)
On the
plane to Osaka
And so the second(!) day of our tour
began on the plane, which was a JAL (Japan Airlines)
flight.
Do take note here - that on many itineraries, which state, let's say: "8 Days", one of the enumerated days could actually be the day of a night flight. That means that most likely, your actual tour starts on the morning of "Day 002". Which actually gives you less one full day. As for about how the "day count" accounts for the "returning day", I'm too tired after work today to recall now, but we'll eventually get to that, much later in the travelogue. Much much later.
12- Beautiful sunrise as we approach
the Land of the Rising Sun. I especially like the way the colour blends from
starry midnight blue to twilight to orange sunrise, creating a colour gradient
effect.
And so, the anticipation begins...
~doki doki... doki doki...~ (the Japanese onomatopoeia for
'heartbeat'... 'heartbeat'...)
Somewhere above Honshu, the main
island. Looking back at these pictures, I'd say that I find the winding mountain
roads and seemingly sparse human settlement areas more relaxing to look at than
the urban densely built-up scenes from above Malaysia (Penang/KL) or the
numerous green-and-brown flat paddy fields above Phnom Penh. The latter scenes
tend to look too 'busy'.
暖かい日差し段々差し込む、いい感じさせたんだ。
atatakai hizashi
dandan sashikomu, ii kanji sasetan da.
16- The gentle morning sunlight starts
to illuminate the skies. In this photo, we were still some distance away from
Kansai airport. Didn't get a photo of it, but Kansai airport looks pretty unique
from the air - a large rectangular piece of 'land'(?) in the middle of the
ocean, connected to the mainland by a bridge.
(UPDATE: Here is a fine picture,
from Wikipedia.) Kansai Airport. (The international
code for this airport is not 'KNS'.)
In transit in
Osaka
Similar to KLIA, we need to board an
internal train to get from the gate to the main airport
building.
18-
My mum
19- 電車男Densha Otoko (Train Man), with
pretty girls in the background (the train was not packed enough, though, to try
the now-institutionalized Japanese cultural on-train practice:
groping.)
20-
Inside Kansai airport. Waiting for
the flight to Sapporo.
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