A Break From Japanese Food

It was a visit to Huis Ten Bosch. A trip just for One Piece, as a birthday present for Raimie last year. We took a break from eating Japanese food and had fast food instead. Birthday boy was happy.

No meat. No chicken for us. Just fish. Fish burger was the meal of the day for us!

A lot of fellow Malaysians would keel over eating burgers in Japan because they won't get chilli sauce with the burgers. What???!!!! No free chilli sauce?! Horror! Who eats burgers without chilli sauce???!!! LOL

Raimie does. We do too!

Actually, our love affair with chilli sauce and pouring them on top of any kind of food is a pet peeve of mine. We eat pizza with chilli sauce. There are people asking for them when eating spaghetti bolognaise (like, you need it with that? Seriously?). Huge dollops needed when eating fried chicken or burgers. Or fried mee. Why of why? For me personally, chilli sauce masks the real taste of the food served. But hey! That's just me.

Pit Stop At Gift Shops

and this particular gift shop is for all things One Piece, over at Huis Ten Bosch. 

 Get your wallets and purse ready! Let's get ready to do some spending!

 

They have everything you probably want. Confectionaries, items of clothing, stationeries, toys and even stamps! Which we have to absolutely get

plus a postcard. We always make a point to send a postcard to ourselves at each different city we visited when we vacation. It makes nice souvenir for us. ^^

Fancy a snack?

Gotta love this sight. Waiting in line patiently to play that One Piece card game. And gotta love the fact that kids were courteous enough not to hog the machine and let others have a go at it too.

There's a One Piece restaurant too, selling all One Piece inspired menu. We didn't eat there though. We went elsewhere for our lunch.

The Netherlands... In Japan

Another post on His Ten Bosch theme park. A glimpse of the Netherlands right there in Kyushu (and in Sasebo city to be exact).

Just photos. I'm having a block. I may have tons of photos that I want to share but laziness stopped me from researching about them or even fact-check. That, a start of a new training program to prepare myself for the Standard Chartered KL Marathon in June and a new Korean drama that I will absolutely obsess with; are all not helping me update my blog here.

Pirates!

Who would travel all the way to Sasebo City in Kyushu just to get onboard a pirate ship? We would! It's a birthday present. Raimie's 9th birthday present to be exact. We didn't plan to make a return visit to Huis Ten Bosch; which is where you can find this ship - the Thousand Sunny but saw an ad of the theme park with One Piece attraction prominently displayed when we went to HIS Travel to buy our JR Pass before our trip in Nov-Dec of last year.

Raimie asked us whether he could get a trip to see the ship and all the One Piece characters as his birthday present instead of us going to Ultramanland and we obliged. Can't say no, when he asked ever so nicely, can I? ^^

We met Chopper and of course who can resist a hug with Chopper?

or Luffy?

Scary Kuma

Trafalgar and Captain Kid

Sanji

Usopp!

 Daddy and his "girlfriend" Nami

Brook (sure sounds like my running shoe brand. heh heh)

And lastly Franky

It was a really nice birthday present for any One Piece fan, going to Huis Ten Bosch, got onboard the Thousand Sunny ship and take photos with the characters (statues, but hey! Whose complaining?), don't you think? ^^

On a totally unrelated connection to pirates -

 Is this the same "mother-child" statues as the one is your post, Rurousha? The angle of your photos made me thought it wasn't at first.

I love how serene the mother looks like and how adoringly the older child look up to his/her mom and the little one was happily and blissfully sleeping. :)

A Trip To Holland?

We saw clogs, plenty of them. All sizes too. From the smallest size for a key-chain to a big one that can sit two adults comfortably in one clog.

Sampled some cheese

Viewed lots of windmills

and got to view some interesting architecture.

All these and we didn't even flew over to Europe! It's right there in Nagasaki; at Huis Ten Bosch theme park!

This and we saw some pirates too! That on the next post. ;)

A Perfect Arch

On a train ride one wet morning in Japan, I saw a perfectly arched rainbow through the window of my train. I tried to capture it. Well, the keyword here is "tried".

I know I didn't make a good job nonetheless I tried and I'm sharing. （￣ー￣）

 

It was my first time seeing such a perfect arched rainbow. It was a wet, cold day that day but I consider myself lucky to experience a wet day because I got to see this! 

Anyway, can you actually see the rainbow that I tried to capture in those two photos?  (#^.^#)

"And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow"

Gilbert K Chesterton

Autumn Reminiscence - In A Foreign Country?

No Spring nor Summer hath such grace

As I have seen in one autumnal face

                                            John Donne

I've mentioned in my earlier post that the "Autumn Reminiscence" Series will be a 7-part posts but I just cannot resist putting up one more post.

 

 

 

 

 

This is Huis Ten Bosch. It is a them park and a residential-style resort built after a 17th century Dutch town.

It makes sense to have a place that somehow paid homage to the European country and architecture seeing that Nagasaki; where this park/resort is located - was the only port open for international trade and thus begin an extremely prosperous relationship between Japan and Holland.

While you are visiting, do read the previous Autumn Reminiscence posts that was put up earlier.
Autumn Reminiscence - Lake Kinrinko
Autumn Reminiscence - Shikoku Mura
Autumn Reminiscence - Nara
Autumn Reminiscence - Ritsurin Koen
Autumn Reminiscence - Ueno Park
Autumn Reminiscence - Yanaka Cemetery
Autumn Reminiscence - Yokohama

And now, time to move on to a new season!

Before that, enjoy this haiku from a fellow blogger, HappySurfer -

Colors of autumn
Artist's delight on canvas
Forever preserved 

HappySurfer

Synchronise Your Watches!

When one has the habit of arriving the train platform just minutes before the train departs, it is imperative that our watch is synchronised to train station's time. ^^

Day 5 : Huis Ten Bosch. Got on board the train just seconds before it departs. Same thing happen when we took the LEX Okayama to Matsuyama. heh

We went to this recreation of the Huis Ten Bosch in Netherlands theme park, located in Nagasaki Prefecture. Raimie had requested a visit there for his birthday present. As a trade-off, he agreed to cancel the trip to Ultramanland in Kumamoto for this.

The view inside the Dutch theme park. One can almost be forgiven for mistaking us being somewhere other than Japan.

Since our main reason is for One Piece attractions, that's what and where we made a beeline for. The One Piece attractions, ships and gift shops!

Mommy, Son & Chopper!

The Thousand Sunny ship. We got onboard it (gotta pay up extra for the privilege) to set sailing on it.

Raimie and the ship

Onboard the ship, with Monkey D Luffy

Daddy and his "new girlfriend"

Setting sail. Brrr.... Cold & windy

We didn't spend a whole lot of time there, and went back at 3.00pm, arriving Hakata Station at 5.00ish. We went back to our hotel room and picked up a few stuff, and took a Limited Express train to Moji Station.

Moji Station

We spent a couple of hours eating takoyaki with a blogger friend, Hanny and her Sons. We had planned to only make a short stop there, but I guess when one is with good company, time does flies. Before we knew it, it was almost 11.00pm! Thank you so much to Hanny and her family for putting up with us! If you remember, when we came to this part of town in 2008, Hanny played host to us too!

A near deserted Kokura Station. We were waiting for the shinkansen to arrive for us to get back to Hakata Station.