Bus Tour 3

For this bus trip, we had to spend a night in Toyama and the tour placed us in APA Hotel Toyama.

The room is the usual single room that you get in most business hotel.

The room has a basic toilet and bath. It's nice that they have tiles instead of the usual pre-built unit walls.

The bed was comfortable and I slept well.

The hotel has a bath area in a separate building which is free for all the guests.

I decided to go and try it. It was definitely disappointing, one of the smallest and worst ones I've been to.

The tour also provided us with coupons for buffet dinner and breakfast! 

Food was good. For dinner we had all you can eat crab legs! 

I think our family took the least number of crab legs among all the guests. Others just piled their plate crab legs. I wonder if they actually finished everything. Some piled like 5-10 on their plates.

Their breakfast consists of the common selection that you get in most hotels. I do enjoy the pumpkin salad that they served! It's the first time I've seen it being served in a hotel buffet!

Overall, I enjoyed the food served an will be happy to return again.

Bus Tour 2

Can't get enough of the white scenery~

After the long bus ride, finally we arrive at Shirakawa-go.

It was snowing pretty heavily when we arrived.

Most people will cross over to the other side of this bridge to see the gassho-zukuri.

Instead, we went to the Gasshozukuri-Minkanen which of course, had a lot less tourists.

There you can enter a few of the gassho-zukuri which had exhibitions like these.

I'm not sure if it's because of the snow, but the surrounding view is amazing.

Also because, this area really had a lot less tourists, I was able to snap some nice pictures.

Lol, daddy busy with this phone!

Website: http://www.shirakawago-minkaen.jp/

It was very cold, but we had to take off our gloves to push the snap buttons on the phone lol.

A nice guard who was working there volunteered to take our pictures.

Highly recommend you to visit this site instead to avoid the crowds.

Some pics of the crowded looking bridge and the snowy mountains.

After about an hour here, we continued on our journey to another gassho-zukuri area.

As we were the only bus tour group there, we got to take some really nice pictures.

There are some shops there which you can buy things from.

I guess we were really lucky that it snowed because it allowed us to enjoy the snowy weather too.

I feel that the snow adds to the charm of this place.

Bus Tour 1

Mum kept saying that she wanted to visit Shirakawa-go. So months before my parents came, I booked a bus tour to Shirakawa-go via Club Tourism.

Website: https://www.club-t.com/

I booked a 2 days/1 night tour which costs about 27,000yen per person.

At 7.40am, we departed from Nishi-Funabashi station and began our long bus journey towards the West side of Japan.

Along the way, we got some really nice views of Mount Fuji, etc.

Even the service area that we stopped at, had a nice lake view

In Japan, service area are like pitstops along the high way with restrooms, restaurants and souvenir shops.

There Dad discovered the hot coffee machine and loved it~!

As it was early January and we were travelling further to the west where snowfalls are heavier, all along the way, we can see snow covered fields.

It also started to snow later in the afternoon.

I really enjoyed the views, coming from hot country that never snows.

Light pink strawberry~

Brought my parents to Sora no iro to let them try their famous vege soba.

Dad for the shoyu ramen while mum ordered the vege soba.

Always enjoy this, but they are soooo stingy with their soup. I feel like if I eat any slower, there will be no more soup left in my bowl because they all got absorbed by the noodles. Seriously, the bowl will be so much more enjoyable if they gave a bit more soup as I would like to drink my soup too and not just eat the ramen.

We went shopping after that and spotted light pink strawberries. 

We got a box to enjoy and they were delicious :)

These light pink ones are cheaper that the white ones which I have not tried yet because they're so expensive! But I definitely love how pretty these pink ones look.