During the weekend I went with some friends to visit Shiroi Koibito Park, a chocolate factory. Shiroi Koibito (which translates to "white lovers") is probably the most popular souvenir from Hokkaido. It's a kind of cookie with white chocolate in the middle.


There is an outdoor garden. To the right of this photo there's a rose garden but unfortunately they weren't in bloom.

Outside the factory. So pretty!

From the cake set, which is a cake/drink combo for around 750 yen (about $8.00). They have a cake buffet too, but it requires reservations and is around $25.00.

A lovely pink piece of cake

Part of the old toy exhibit

Not sure why a Resident Evil/Biohazard like monster is at a place that features a rose garden, tea cup collection, and cake buffet. But it lights up and looks neat.

Some kind of bad-ass Hell Rider! Again, not really fitting in with the surroundings but one neat fact is this was all made from recycled/found materials.


View from second floor of the main hall area. It was a lot nicer than I expected for a chocolate "factory".


They have recommended "picture taking spots", and this was one of them!


Fountain outside the factory


From one of the displays

My impression of the place is it's a bit of a tourist trap, but there is stuff to see and do that doesn't require an access fee. There is a English pamphlet available that tells you exactly what is available and what requires a fee. There's a place where you can make your own cookie, but its over ten dollars to make one and I just wasn't interested enough to do that. The whole place is pretty cute and quaint. As for the famous cookies, they are kind of expensive on a student budget. I bought some for family but haven't even had it myself yet. The only other chocolate factory tour I've been on is Purdys when I was a kid back in Vancouver. Obviously Purdys was nowhere this nice and interesting, but there were tonnes of free chocolate samples that I ate until I got sick. YUM!

The school festival at Hokkaido University was awesome! For Vancouver folks, its sort of like our Chinese night market in Richmond in terms of yummy food stalls. Except instead of being in a warehouse/parking lot area, the school festival is of course, on the beautiful grounds of the University. Food was cheap, plentiful, and delicious. Approx. 2-3 dollars for most things like green tea ice cream crepe, takoyaki, mashed potato and cheese doreyaki. A lot of people dress up as well, to try and get the crowd to visit their stalls. Although there was a lot of people, the festival is stretched over quite a distance so it never feels too crowded and you never have to wait too long for food.
Being a school festival, parts of the school and classrooms are open to the public to see performances and work by students. It's a lot of fun, and great PR for the school too. I wish we had something like this back home! Yummy food, great atmosphere, and cross-dressing. Yay!

The person on the far right in a school girl outfit is actually a guy. But he can pull it off! Cute. The other day at Yosakoi there was a big older man who definitely could not pull off his wig, skimpy dress, and heels. Ech.

Girl in a Rilakkuma costume :D

Today my host institution arranged for a visit to participate in the Japanese Tea Ceremony, called Sadou 「茶道」. Some students from first year was there as well, and it was also their first time. I guess while it's a unique aspect of the culture, it's not as common as I thought since it was also my Japanese teacher's first time as well. Even in our beginner's version it feels like there was a lot of steps to run though, and each little step has some significance that relates to the ceremony as a whole. 

We had to sit in "seiza", a traditional kneeling/sitting posture which I haven't done since my kendo days.  We were sitting that way for so long that I literally couldn't move my legs to get up again..  Luckily I wasn't the only one so it wasn't like everyone got up and left with me still sitting there like an idiot!

Although it's quite late into my study abroad experience, I'll be posting here anyway in the event that I somehow lose the hard copies of all my photos!

Who doesn't like bunnies? More pen tool practice...

Till Lindermann from Rammstein. This was just to practice drawing/painting technique with texture in Photoshop.

Portrait of Dita Von Teese using type