Hello Fukuoka!
We met up w our tour guide D*anny, who was supposedly taiwanese or hongkongnese but we later found out that he is Singaporean....Our first impressions of him wasn't that good...cos he seemed a lil unfriendly, a lil grouchy and a lil......haha.....anws he gav us time to wash up while we waited for the rest of the tour mbrs to fall in! Our grp's pretty small, 5 groups of ppl, consisting of us, 2 families of 4, a family of 3 and lastly 2 girls who were friends.

Pictures taken at the airport

D*anny gave us a brief introduction to the culture and history of Japan....lullabye lullabye....we soon dozed off bcos most of us did not get quality slp onboard our flight. Moreover, it is impt we preserve our energy for the themepark! hahah...

We arrived at Huis Ten Bosch, after a 1 hour plus ride from the airport. Oh yes, our bus driver was Tanaka-san...i hope i did not get his name wrong....he's v nice, helpful and alw so smiley!

Huis Ten Bosch! It is actuali a dutch-inspired themepark. I wikipediaed HTB and found out that it is the name of one of the royal residences of the Dutch Imperial Family in the Netherlands! How cool.... anws, the themepark is built such that everythg inside reminds you of Europe...at least that was my impression of the place...the architecture, the colourful flowers, the windmills, towering clocks, the bridges.....


At the entrance of HTB:



4 of us posing:

Introducing: Piggo aka Qing Ru, Piggy aka ming en/ernie, porkchop aka Yu Shan/shany, porky aka yong qi and not forgetting our dearest piglet aka wan lin who's d fingers behind this peekture =)

Piggy aka ernie...doing wad she does best at: making piggy faces heheh:



Our bear, decorated w Ru's scarf...kawaii neh...



D*anny brought us to take a boat ride ard HTB...we snapped many pics of the scenery (architecture) as well as our ourselves on the boat....=D









The good weather made our pictures turn out sooooo good....beautiful ^^

Cam-whoring on the boat:










After our boat ride, D*anny brought us to some of the better 3D shows in the themepark. We later realised to our disappointment that HTB was more of a themepark that offered 3D shows rather than rides....but anws, we enjoyed some of the shows that reali showed off Japan's high-end technology in 3D imaging =)

We were all entralled and particulary porky qi w d blooming flowers in bright hues at the themepark....we couldn't resist but cam-whored again...hahah





The giant windmill in the background......















Yesh! We luv our flowers! All girls love flowers of all colours, all shapes, all sizes.... *winks*

We went for many 3D shows but 1 is worth mentioning! I cant remember the name but it has something to do w Space galaxy. It required all of us to hav our faces scanned biometrically (it was carried out v systematically), after which our faces wld be stored in the database....we found out later that each of our faces had an attached identity which was part of the story...later we all viewed the show, the different characters having all of our faces, wearing the various spacesuits! How interesting is that ritez....haha oni ernie's face was visible during the show...d rest of us had probs identifying our faces! haha....

We had lunch at a restuarant, called Smoky Place, we were starved piggies by then.....ru and I had curry cheese baked rice, the gals shared a curry cheese baked rice and a ginger beef w rice. Overall, it tasted quite gd......

Our curry cheese baked rice =D

Browsing thru the map after our meal:

Glutton as we are, piggies mahs....we headed off to hunt for ice-cream!! We walked and walked.....to find a cheaper ice-cream...

Sights and scenes captured along the way:

Ta-da and we found our ice-cream at this small cafe at the back alley.....

We had macha ice-cream (ernie, shany, qi), strawberry (ru) and cappucino (wan lin)! See the cones, w the petal-ed like design....soo pwetty, oh yes, the ice-cream's v delicious too....

The satisfied 4 making farni faces to show their luv for the ice-cream, from left, ernie looks constipated, qi looks shocked, wl looks greedy, ru looks smitten......hahahah....dun kill me

oh yea....frm the ice-cream eating, we learnt that ernie cannot handle cone icecream cos d ice cream melts at a faster rate den the rate at which she is licking...yews...haha sounds gross...but yea ernie made a mess of d macha ice cream poor ice-cream.....

The gals went for a carousel ride after the ice-cream. They all looked lk happie princesses in their own love stories...awww

Presenting to you................

Princess Qi:

Princess Ernie:


Princess Wan Lin:

Princess Ru:

Purrfect peekture!


After the carousel ride, we went for lotsa food tasting, particulary the Castella, a type of cheese cake tt's popular in Fukuoka....i loved the cheesecake...i tink so did wl n ernie...ru got abit sick of it after a while, qi doesn't tk cheese....the castella came in many types of flavours...macha, blueberry, green apple.....which tasted pretty decent too! =D

Den....We walked and walked and chanced upon a rose garden. Another picture point!

Den another picture point....so unique (thanks to ru's ingenious idea!)....we even got the attraction of the japanese uncles.....ehehe

It started w a lonesome picture frame randomly placed:

We ended w silly poses....silly but highly creative wahaha:

SaDaKo.....wooo...climbing out of the pic frame...how scary is that!

An artsy pose, pretending to be opera singing agst our artsy backdrop:



Peekaboo!

Grabs and claws:

Yogaposy:

A group shot taken by the uncle....showcasing our diplomatic waves, if one day we become princesses lol:



Some random shots:


Posing w the big shoe:

The clock tower:

A flower bed clock- us showing that the time is 15:11..

Huggy huggy w bear bear....look at the cute korean gal...she blur blur walked into our pic...haha..she's v cute la....

Ru and ernie w bear:

Ernie w her best fren, Tuly Tuly hahaha:

Wl w ice-cream bear:

Departed HTB! And proceeded w our first dinner in Japan...we were quite excited cos dinner was on a tatami...

Pictures of our dinner:

Before our food came:




Our yummy dinner:

Rice, tempura and sauce, udon w seaweed soup and chicken kariage.....we chomped dwn our food!

After dinner, we travelled back to our hotel at Hotel Monterey Nagasaki...needless to say, we left Fukuoka for Nagasaki =)

Hotel Monterey Nagasaki, which was claimed to be lk Raffles Hotel in Singapore, minus a few stars....oh well...mebbe the exterior looks lk but def not the inside....neways who r we to say...none of us hav bn to d inside yet hahah:

Posing w our hotel room nos...haha....

Postscript: So many pics......i've my best to include as many pics as I can.....and I hope my commentary is nt too boring.....to our dear readers: hope you've enjoyed looking at our pics as much we enjoyed taking them...you mus b wondering y so many pics (trust me thr's MORE tt's not being showcased here on this blog haha)....i guess it was the first day in Japan and we gals are very excited and kept snapping away and HTB has many pic spots despite it being a quite boring themepark. But i guess every pic represents a beautiful memory tt we hav of HTB and day 2 as a whole! To my dear piggies, hope this entry has evoked d gd memories of our japan 2008 trip and will motivate u guys to start working on the entries for the other days too =P! I can't wait to see the blog being completed and sealed w love and endearing smiles wor!!

*hearts* Shany