Hokkaido University botanical garden: the greenhouse ++ Museum of Modern Art

It's official! I want a greenhouse one day that is large enough to support the plants of my Floridian childhood! :) 

There was a total of about 7 different rooms in this greenhouse! 

Steps are manditory.

 

In the middle of the larger room, there was a pond of lily pads and aquatic plants. 

 

One of the rooms was the "room of death" nicknamed by Kevin (as an Ace Ventura reference). 

It had a variety of carnivorous plants.

By the way, I totally see the idea for Nintendo's old Mario plants here...

 

There were some orchids blooming in this room too.

 

There was a whole other room dedicated to orchids but disappointingly not many were blooming.

 

Then last, there was a room hotter than the rest... The cactus room. It felt like a summer day in Florida and no one wanted to be in here long. (Especially me with a heater in the Boba).

Giant cacti.

And little potted ones all along the walls. 

 

 

And succulents too! :)

 

Outside the door of the "Florida room", there were some ivy sitting prettily. How could I resist a photo?!

 

Outside the greenhouse, we recooped from the heat, took some pictures of the plants outside (in the last post), and drank some water etc.

 

Boys will be boys though and play with their phones...

Poor Elisabeth having to endure that conversation. ;)

 

 After the botanical garden, we stopped in the Ainu museum located close to the entrance/exit. It was a small little exhibit about the indigenous people of Hokkaido.

Then we walked about 1km to the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art where we enjoyed this spectacular exhibition. 

 Obviously, I could only take pictures on the outside of the building, but the exhibition about Mucha was AMAZING gorgeous SUPERB wonderful... basically everything I had ever wanted. 

He is by FAR my favorite artist ever and the exhibition was about his life and work with personal photos taken by him, his art, and even studies he did before the completed works. 

This guy was crazy talented. He made incredibly art on his own, but he also designed ads for the theater and other companies, product design (like the most ornate cookie tins ever), jewelry, dishes, clothes, theater sets and costumes... Check out the website if you're interested in him. 

After, the art museum, we took the subway to Sapporo station, walked through the malls there again and then caught dinner at Stellar Palace's 6F dining area, at a little and insanely popular (and highly recommended) sushi train place. It was a lot of fun and we stuffed our faces with delicious sushi. YUM! 

It was a really great day! :) I know I say that a lot, but it really was.

Yesterday, the weather SUCKED so we stayed indoors and I blogged (as you can see). My dad and Kevin caught a showing of Captain America at the movie theater and had fun together hanging out. 

Today, we are heading out in the CRAZY brutal wind and rain and are going to Sapporo Factory Mall and Ario. I think it's a decent way to spend the day considering being outdoors is not really an option. ;)

See ya around!

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!

 

Compare this view to this blog post on April 8th. :)

 

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!