Sakura = cherry blossoms
Ume = plum, or Japanese apricot
Unbeatable beauty. Like the magnolias, deserving of their own post. Be still my beating heart!
Which one was your favorite? :)
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Nakijima koen blooming
Tuesday was a holiday here, the start of Golden Week. Kevin had the day off and the weather was gorgeous so it was a no-brainer, we were going to have to head outside and admire spring!
We stopped by one of our local grocery stores, picked up some ready sushi meals and snacks and walked to nearby Nakajima park. There was actually a little flea market type deal but nothing cool, mainly just clothes :P
The park was full of blooming cherry and/or plum blossoms!
Apparently it is quite hard to tell the difference between cherry and plum blossoms but I remembered one tree had a name (prunus sargentii) and I googled that and it was a cherry tree. So there! ;)
We had yummy sushi and dessert was daifuku which we are crazy about and this wagashi, Japanese sweet. It was really pretty and we haven't seen these in the store before (Golden week special?), but it tasted like...sugar. It really didn't taste like much of anything. But it was pretty!
There's a huge pond in the middle of Nakajima park.
And you can rent little boats and row around it.
It's actually kind of fun watching people out there. Lots of people who don't know how to row :D We saw two young guys making their friends laugh by standing up in their boat (!) and then doing a Titanic moment (I'm king of the world)
In addition to the cherry and plums, there are azaleas all over.
So scenic!
We walked through Nakajima park last time, but this time, we really meandered and explored it. We skipped this Japanese garden bit tucked away in the corner. This time, we sat here for quite a while taking in the zen feeling. ;) And people watching!
Even Elisabeth thought watching a family try to get a ball back out of the pond was interesting. They got it in the end, but they had to wait for the wind to bring the ball back to shore... It went out to that little island and back and the little girl looked crushed. Poor thing :D
We couldn't believe she wore her sunhat for like 10 minutes!
Lime green weeping willows. Pink blossoms.
Spring in Sapporo. ♥
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Blooming magnolias
A whole post dedicated to this gorgeous tree! All pictures were taken over the last few days on our walks around town :) Enjoy!
Tsukisamu and Makonomai
Saturday we went shopping for a sunhat for Miss Elisabeth. We had big plans to take advantage of the great weather (sunny, warm, gorgeous!) and go for a picnic at a park but first we wanted a sunhat, sunscreen, and a picnic blanket. Off we went first thing in the morning.
Sunscreen was easy, we found that at the pharmacy across the street. Then we took the subway down to Sapporo station, since Kevin found a Hello Kitty store in Apia, the underground shopping mall there.
The Hello Kitty store was great, but unfortunately no sunhats. :( We didn't buy anything else there either. So off we went around Apia, looking for more stores that could sell a baby sunhat. We ended up walking around all of Sapporo station and the numerous stores and shopping malls. There's actually a couple attached: the underground Apia and then the connecting ESTA mall. I'm pretty sure it's split into more shopping bits, but those are the two big names anyway. They have a lot of stuff, Bic Camera, the Gap, Daimaru, etc etc etc. There's even a Cath Kidston store where I wished I had about 80e to drop on a canvas tote. (Hahahahhahaah).
We ended up spending so much time looking for a sunhat and not finding one, that we decided to fudge it and go to Ario (the mall we discovered by chance that had the Toys R Us) because we KNEW there were tons of kid's clothing stores there. So off we went in the warm sun to Ario, on foot like usual.
We got a little turned around but fortunately we found it! YAY!
We did indeed find a sunhat. No picnic blanket though. :( And we spent ALL day there. Yeah, we went through the whole mall and had so much fun perusing that we ended up leaving at about 5 pm!
So much for picnics...
So we woke up Sunday morning rearing to go and enjoy the weather... well, it was an overcast day. Go figure! We decided to go ahead and picnic anyway since we missed out the day before and after much debate, we decided to go to Seiyu for some quick sushi and then to Tsukisamu park which is relatively close by.
Elisabeth was so mad that she had to wear a hat and shoes. She hates them both and we spent the whole day putting them back on after she pulled them off. She's always barefoot because she pulls her socks off too immediately.
We found the park and ate our lunch (starving by then of course!) and then kind of bummed that the park wasn't bigger, we took our sleeping Elisabeth away from the noisy park (lots of kids), and headed out for plan B, Makonomai park.
Giant slides!
Blooming azaleas everywhere.
Primroses :)
We decided to walk to minami hiragishi station since it was equal distance on Kevin's map to hiragishi station (1.6km) and along the way we found a gorgeous park tucked away between buildings in a neighborhood. The views were breathtaking and you could see as far as the TV tower in Odori park! Gorgeous! We spent a while here admiring the views and such since it was the perfect little hidden gem of a park and the kind of place we wished we had eaten lunch at!
When we finally made it to minami hiragishi we debated whether or not we should just walk home or if we should catch the next train south to Makomanai. In the name of adventure we decided to just go for it and I'm glad we did! The park itself is the whole area and there are three paths you can take. We decided to just walk in direction of the river and see what we find. The bridge was inviting and I'm so glad we went on it!
Gorgeous views of Toyohira river. Everything is really turning green now, I love it!
We got on to the sidewalk along the river with the intention to just walk a little bit... well we ended up walking the whole way home along the river! I'm so glad we did, we saw lots of cool things along the way and the mountain views were just gorgeous. We saw our local Mt Moiwa from a different angle and generally, we were just closer to the mountains south of us that I always admire on my walks.
Sister, this railing along the road made me think of you!!
A (free) water park for kids, empty at the moment but definitely going to have to get a bathing suit for Elisabeth this summer!
Once we got home, we were sooooo tired. Kevin calculated that we walked roughly 11+ km (6.8 miles) that day. He made miso ramen for dinner and then we were out like lights! :) Great weekend once again!
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