Playground

There is a wee playpark in the village.  Here are some pics of the twins enjoying the space

Dinner in Hirafu

Hirafu is a small resort area, a couple of miles along the road from us.  In Winter it will be heaving, but right now it is quite quiet.  Given it's a resort area, there are loads of restaurants, cafes and bars - and even a michelin star restaurant (Kamimura).

We don't love Hirafu. I'm sure it's fab to be here in Winter as the ski conditions are said to be amazing.  But the style of some of the developments is all a bit bling bling.  I guess a lot of the investment into the area has come from Hong Kong, and so Hirafu is a 'lifestyle destination" and is quite resort-y in parts.  Luxury apartments, fancy hotels, expensive restaurants; rather incongruous to the local area.

Anyway, one Friday night we were in Hirafu to sample one of the onsen there, and stopped by in Abucha for dinner. 

Mt Yotei in background

Tables were hori-kotatsu style

Sashimi (I hardly managed to get the camera out before Rit had scoffed most of it)

Freshwater grilled shrimp - Oscar ate them heads and all, and declared them sweet and delicious

Hokkaido grilled beef with wasabi salt

Grilled chicken with karashi miso paste

Nikka Whisky

There is a whisky distillery in the town of Yoichi, here in Hokkaido. We visited recently. A very interesting back story to this place.

A young Japanese man wanted to learn the art of scotch malt whisky making. He travelled to Scotland, enrolled at Glasgow University to study chemistry, and was given apprenticeships at a couple of distilleries. During his time in Glasgow, he boarded with a family (in Kirkintilloch) where he met and fell in love with the daughter, Rita. They married in Glasgow registry office, and Rita travelled back to Japan with her husband, where they moved to Hokkaido, as they felt it was very like Scotland in scenery and climate. Rita immersed herself in Japanese culture, supporting the family with music and English lessons, while her husband endeavoured to set up his own distillery. The distillery produces some of Japan's best whisky, and is still going strong.

See here for a bbc article on the Mother of Japanese whisky: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-30682239

Chomin Centre

This is our last week of summer school.  The regular school term starts back this week, so the international school teachers are back at work.  So for our last week, we have relocated to the chomin centre (or townspeople centre) which is a modern building (built in 2012) used as a meeting and conference centre in Niseko.  It is absolutely beautiful, with lots of hand-crafted furniture, big windows, very light and very cool.  We love it.  Here are some pics.

Niseko Brewing

There is a wee craft beer company in the village, called Niseko Brewing.  Really a charming place.  From the outside it looks like an office.  On the ground floor is the brewing room and upstairs is the restaurant, called nikai (meaning second floor). 

There was a nice veranda with a view of Niseko's yellow bridge. 

 R, O and Pikachu 

They gave us a sampling of their beers.  The only one not ready was their Rose Biere. Zannen ne!

Oscar ordered a cold green tea, and rose had a cup of milk tea. 

The chef here wants to use local ingredients as much as possible. We had a very interesting dinner, and mostly delicious. 

Here was a Hokkaido tomato salad. Served with okra and some kind of pickled stem. On top there was shaved daikon radish, some myoga and a jelly made from bonito (dried, fermented fish).

 Here we have sunagimo, which we learned is gizzards.  Cooked with pink peppercorns. Rit loved it. 

Octopus cooked in Niseko beer 

Tempura

This was listed under yasai na mono (vegetable things) on the menu - so I was surprised to see some prawns and some dried sting ray in there.

We all really loved this place.  Mostly because it was so chilled out, we met some lovely people.

Good luck to the guys at Niseko Brewing!

A bug hotel!

Last week we were talking about habitats in class. And our topic was mushi (bugs)!

So naturally, the kids went out into the garden and made bug hotels.  The winning team were the ones whose bug hotel received the most visitors after three days.

 This one takes the design prize

 Luke and Sho

Chiharu 

The winners for most bugs: Teppei, Olly and Oscar

 

The kids also made a wee bug graveyard.  Lovely. 

Pure - part IV

The tree trek

Actually I am amazed they did this. We should maybe have been up there with them too.  Oops. Lots of small kids had to come off half way through, but R&O made it to the end.

 All harnessed up

Getting the translated instruction 

And she's off 

First part seemed safe enough 

Now it was getting a wee bit high 

At least they had each other 

Wow  

Easy for Oscar 

That's pretty high 

Love this pic 

What troopers!

The trek ended in a zip line - so fun!