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Oct 10: Sapporo - AEON Shopping Mall - Moerenuma Park - Miyajima-numa

We started the day with a mixture of freshly baked pastries from the AEON Shopping Mall. They were yummy and a great way to fuel us up for our walk around Moerenuma Park.  This is a really lovely and well planned city park.















The first section we explored, Forest of Cherry Trees, contained multiple colorful play areas. This would be an awesome place for young children - so many colours, shapes, and structures for climbing (bars,  cubes, hexagonal pods, curved Donuts,  etc)! They also had some really interesting (and steep!) slides.


Next up was a jog up 'Play Mountain'! My lungs almost collapsed in the cold wind, but the view at the top was quite spectacular.  The view looking back up after descending the opposite side was also beautiful, with the 3 different types of landscaping (texture and colour).  We also checked out a few more things there, but the fountain that we waited for was a real disappointment!  Overall, it was  a relaxing and lovely morning.






















Next up, we did some shopping at AEON to kill time before driving up to Miyajima-numa to watch the arrival of thousands of migrating birds.  If you think I'm exaggerating ... they counted 23 000 birds the day before!  It truly was a sight to behold ... V after V after V of geese & swans flying in from both directions to circle and land in the pond.  I related it to a swarm of locusts.  It was raining fairly hard and it was getting dark, and this was pretty out of the way; but we all agreed it was worth the drive!



We then proceeded to drive for an hour in the dark to go to Kindaiteig for a special traditional salmon dinner.  We were quite excited when we found the old house at the destination, but it was partially closed.  Regardless you need to reserve in advance!  Oh well ... we ended up having a regular meal at a nearby inn before calling it a night!

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