Purple

This post is called "Purple" because I believe I probably saw the most purple I ever have at one time in my life. I will get to that in a little bit, lol. So, Sunday morning, my host mom picked up Kentaro from his hotel. He came over and we prepared to go to the zoo. We would not stay long though because we made plans to fit in as much sightseeing as we could. Kentaro borrowed my host mom's bike and we headed off to Asahiyama Zoo. The bike ride was fun and we both took pictures. I wasn't the only one taking a lot of pictures, because this was the first time Kentaro has been in Hokkaido too. At the zoo, we visited the polar bears first. The lines were super long compared to the first time I went. This was due to a holiday weekend. The line did not matter though because I could talk with Kentaro. After seeing the polar bears, we visited the seals and penguins. It was extremely hot that day so it was nice to go inside the air-conditioned zoo buildings.

We had to hurry back home because we had to catch a train. It was to Furano to visit the lavender farms. I was super excited, it was what I wanted to see the most in Hokkaido. This time of year, the middle of July, is when the lavenders bloom. So a special train is running at this time because so many people visit. The train ride was about an hour to the farm. Outside of the windows we saw the mountain ranges with clouds resting right over the top of them and going down the sides looking like an avalanche. It was one of the coolest views ever. At the farm, we could see a ton of purple lavenders and red flowers along the side of a huge hill. When we reached the entrance, I purchased some lavender-flavored Calpis to drink. They had a ton of lavender flavored things. I am sorry I don't have pictures right now, but I will get them up as soon as possible. We were amazed at the amount of lavenders there were. Multiple acres of just pure lavender flowers. We then headed up the left hill and there was a huge patch of red flowers. We ran to the top and saw even more lavenders going all the way up to the mountains in the distance. It was one of the best views I have ever seen!

We stopped at another shop and I tried lavender jelly, lol. We visited the souvenir shop and then went to the flower rows. There were rows and rows of different colored flowers. White, red, purple, orange, yellow, and more. The whole section of the hill was covered in it. We headed back to the entrance for ice cream, thinking we saw everything. We happened to take a look at a map and then noticed we had only seen the left side! There was still a middle and a right side, lol. We almost missed the biggest patch of lavender flowers. So back we went. I was in awe of how many flowers there were. It was just, well, awesome. We got our lavender ice cream and took a seat on a bench in front of the field of lavender flowers. Kentaro and I relaxed for a while and enjoyed the beautiful view. We went to another souvenir shop and looked around some more. When we looked at the time, we knew we had to run to the train station because we took every minute possible to look at the flowers. That was a lot of purple! The pictures I took don't even show all of them. There were just too many to fit in one picture.

We went back to Asahikawa City and looked around for a place to eat. I wanted to try some food from the fast food restaurants before leaving Japan, so this seemed like a good opportunity and Kentaro was up for it too. I had seen and heard of MOS Burger (pronounced mosu baagaa. MOS is an acronym for "Mountain Ocean Sun", and it is a fast-food restaurant chain that originated in Japan. I was told that it is probably the second largest fast-food franchise in Japan after McDonald's.) Well, my brother told me that I had to try eating at McDonald's when I went to Japan, because it was so different there, so it was hard for me to choose. I decided that I wanted to try the teriyaki burgers at both MOS Burger and McDonald's. So I got one from each place. (I liked MOS Burger the best. McDonald's was OK, but MOS Burger was better.) Afterwards, we went to a curry rice restaurant and ordered a small plate. Then we went to Mister Donuts and got a donut. So it was a multiple restaurant meal, haha. At Mister Donut, Kentaro used some of his points he saved up and bought me a mascot ramen bowl. Each donut was around 3 points and the bowl was 150 points. So it was very nice of him to buy me a bowl.

It was getting late so we took the bus back home to Mrs. Mikami's house. We talked and I had some melonpan. We were joking around and I was laying on the floor. I pretended to fall asleep and then my host mom said "Adam, Wake up!" I looked up and she had her fist over my head so I bumped into it. She was laughing hysterically at the classic joke. HAHA.

The next day Kentaro and I were going to take the train to Sapporo city. We had to wake up early so to bed we went. (That sounded like Yoda.)