Date:  Dec 17, 2015

After our skiing trip @ Rusutsu Resorts, we continue our journey on guided tour arranged by Hokkaido Treasure Island Travel Inc.  This time, we have a English speaking tour guide.

This is our itinerary.

And since we have two families, 8 person, the travel agency arranged a mini-bus for us.

And this is our mini-bus for the next 4 days.

Meet our English speaking tour guide who is going to follow us for the next 4 days along with the mini-bus.  She is Ms. Tomoko-san.

This is his email and contact.

She is so good that she even prepare child friendly, drawn by her, information about Hokkaido and Japan and explain patiently about Hokkaido to the kids.

This is my travel agency.  Ms. Misa Kawata is my holiday planner in Hokkaido.

Our first stop is the Volcano museum.  Japan is a country that is full of active Volcano.  So, the kids can learn everything about Volcano here.

This is the remaining of the bent railroad almost destroyed during one of the Volcano eruption.

Then, we have lunch in one of the restaurant here in Lake Toya.

Wow, nice view.

In the afternoon, we visited Mt. Uso Ropeway.

This is like sitting in a cable car and go up the mountain so that you can view the the active Volcano from Mt. Uso.

This is the active volcano.

Jay Jay love taking this ropeway cart.

You can see the volcano from here.

I remember we went down to see the volcano opening last year.

This is the panoramic view on top of Mt. Uso.

At the bottom of Mt. Uso there is a bear park.

You can see bear in here.

There is a lot of bear here.

Lots of bears.  Bears is waving hand to you.  Feed them please.

Feed the bear.

Young Kay feed the small bears.

After that, before we checked in hotel, the tour agency arranged for 2 person from our group to make glass art piece from blowing the glass.  This is done at Gla Gla.

We have decided to let the kids to try blowing the glass.  It shall be Jay and Kayden.

The process of making glass.

Blowing the glass.

Don’t play play, Jay Jay now has the experience of blowing glass and make himself the art pieces.  And he really blow the glass out.

For more info on this and videos, please see here.  http://miniliew.org/2015/12/26/hokkaido-2015-jay-makes-glass/

By the time we finished, it is time to check into the hotel and eat our dinner.  This is at the Toya SunPalace onsen hotel.

And the dinner has already been served.

Impressive.

This is another onsen hotel beside Lake Toya.  So, every room is facing lake toya.

You can see how pack the breakfast place is.

But the view is nice.

Food is excellent too.  Yeap, Ikura don.  hahaha

Today we are going to Otaru.

First, we make a quick stop at Gla Gla to pick up the glass art piece that is blowed by Jay and Kayden.

Jay is so happy about his glass.

And they will take a picture with the Sifu (teacher) who taught them how to make glass yesterday.

And then, we make a quick stop at Lake Hill Farm to learn how to make Ice Cream.

All of us are eager to make our own ice cream.

Are we ready?

Let’s start.

Kids always have lots of fun making ice cream.

Every one put up their best effort to make ice cream.

She is making sure we did it correctly.

She even teach us how to make waffle.

Finally it is done.  It was so fun.  To learn the recipe, you can go here.  http://miniliew.org/2015/12/31/how-to-make-ice-cream/

Basically you need to spin the ice cream on a cold ice.

Spin Spin Spin…

We are indeed very proud of ourselves.

I just realised that our mini-bus is quite big.

After making ice cream, we are on the way to Otaru.

We stopped at a resting place.  Lots of snow.

That is how deep the snow is.  And the kids loves it.

Look at the sky, it is really nice.  Blue blue..

Lake Toya is very big.  We are actually still in Lake Toya district.

Kay jump.

So fun to jump.

Prepare for the snow fight.

I guess is very cold.

We finally on the road again.  And about 1 hour later, Tomiko-san suggested we stop at this place to refill our water and refresh ourselves.

Here got a lot of snow too.

These are the melted snow water.

It is fresh and very cold.

Wow.  This place looks like fairy tale place.

Wow, so nice.

Let’s take a nice photo.

Let’s get more water.

Let’s take a photo from far.

Let’s take a selfie.

And with the kids.

That concludes our Lake Toya trip.  And now we are heading to Otaru.  What surprises the tour agent have installed for us?