Hokkaido July 2010 Trip - Day 8 - Furano the City of Lavender

Some sweet please

Finally we went to Furano on the next day. We have been anticipate for our trip to Furano for quite sometimes. (Since it is the flower or Lavender viewing days for us - Yes LB love the lavender a lot and for me I love purple color flower. :"P) Anyway we arrived that early so we decided to walk around the town before our train departure time to the flower garden.

More Photos after the jump...

On the way to Furano

Oh small small stage for some performance event. :)

We know that there will be like small summer celebration that night. Anyway we meet Sue (a Taiwanese who work in the JR station) who will try to assist the tourist to get all their required tickets (or location information). A friendly lady in deed. She also recommended us to a coffee shop for lunch that sell great sandwiches and spaghetti. (A homey meal I will say ;)). I just love the feeling that this coffee shop gives me, I will post some additional photos on my next post for this coffee shop. ;)

One antique coffee maker

Chef at work

Just love the feel of the shop

I bet there are a lot of memories here. :)

Either for the chef or the visitors...

Our chef here. :)

We arrived at the flower garden finally but we are sad to say that most of the lavender has withered. :( Guess we just missed the best period for Lavender. So BKM for those who wanna go next round may be you all could planned to go around mid of July. Anyway, we only manage to see one small piece of lavender field. Not really big enough but is good enough for us. I bet the view will be much better if all the flowers are fully flown at that time.

Getting ready to go to the flower garden

LB making some landscape shoot

one final piece of blown flower... ~: (

Machine to extract the lavender juice to make the soup

Lavender

LB here! :"D

He is just cute (with his rain coat and umbrella) :"D

Yeah, the view here is just nice (even though it is raining)

I just love purple color flower

Production in progress

After that we went back to Furano near the evening to get ready for the 肚臍祭 there. :) Everybody will paint their belly with a face and than have a parade on that. :) Everybody is busy getting ready for the festival painting their belly and for international team, if you wanna paint your belly, it is totally alright, but of course if you don't want to. You will get a plain white t-shirt to draw any faces that you want on it. :) The festival start with a small ritual and then the drum starts to roll and the parade started. All the team are dancing using a uniform dance steps and everything last for like 1 hours! :"D It is just a great experience on that. :)

some pre festival ritual

I just noticed that all those who carried the statue are women.

1..2.. Moving forward!

Fatherhood

Remind me of the Inception poster

It is about to start

Drummers are ready to roll as well

Let's get it started

Check out the belly painting! :")

and also some ladies in Kimono

Just follow the tempo

I saw you

the foot step is unified

No No! Don't snap me

Uncle showing his drunken master dance

The ladies from JR. :)

I bet they enjoy it a lot

Left and Right

Moving forward gentleman! (The paint on the belly is falling)

"Grrr..."

I could feel the happiness that the audience have as well as the energy that the parade participant have delivered during the event. It is just awesome. Anyway, that's all I got for tonight. There will be more photos coming up on the next post. I hope that you all will enjoy and feel the festival as much as I do. :") Night and have a great Sunday evening ahead.

* For those who are interested, the full series could be view here. Thanks.