Speaking of Hokkaido's flower farms, the most well known of the lot must've been this Farm Tomita. The 'rainbow field' image of the farm was photographed and made famous in Japan Rail calendar.
We were there in September and the Lavender Batake station was no longer in operation as it was passed summer. Therefore, the nearest train station in operation to Farm Tomita is Nakafurano station. Nakafurano station is a small station, and it was manned by a nice uncle. I think this poor uncle must've repeat himself many times a day telling tourists how to walk to Farm Tomita. :P
See the dash-line in grey? That's the direction to walk to Farm Tomita. Uncle said it takes 25 minutes to walk there, one could get there in probably 20 minutes if brisk walk.
Once you walked out of the station, turn right and you will see a staircase leading to a bridge. Take the staircase and cross the bridge, after getting off the bridge, walk straight on and you will find the train station on your right (on a parallel road). If you walked to the end of the road, there is a hospital on your left, turn left and walked to the end of the T junction. At T junction, turn right and just walk along the road till you reach Farm Tomita. :)
Along the way to Farm Tomita, there is another farm - Lavender Farm.
This is a poor picture, but I just want to show that there's a viewing platform if you cross the bridge.
Farm Tomita, despite need a little hard work to get to, my friend told me not to miss it. And I'm glad I didn't.
It was originally a simple lavender farm, today the farm has expanded to include a number of large fields of various flowers. There is also a Tomita Melon House before you set your foot in the flower farm. We didn't drop by due time factor, the sun was on its way to set.
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| I like how the trees are at the end of the fields.. |
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| Lavender carpet |
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| Inside the green house |
We retraced our steps back to Nakafurano station after the sun set, it was a little dark to see the flower fields then :P
We made it in time to catch the 7.17 pm train from Nakafurano back to Asahikawa. If we missed it, the next and last train was scheduled at 8.51 pm. When we reached back at the Nakafurano station, there were only 4 other passengers waiting for the train. The Uncle was nowhere to be seen, most likely already off work. We were a little blur, as every time we took a train, we had to show our tickets and there was a station manager at work. We later found out that we had to walk out ourselves and board the train. Also, the trains servicing these areas are local trains and fares were collected on train. We didn't have to pay separate fare as we had our round tour ticket.
Side note: Yawn...
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