Hokkaido - Sapporo

The long weekend up north to Hokkaido was a fantastic trip. The plane departed from Haneda Airport, a short monorail from my apartment which made a huge difference to the usual trek out to Narita. As the flight is domestic, checking-in was a breeze and soon we were on the JAL flight. A free drink and a lot of turbulence later, and we landed.

Still mid-March and up north, I was advised to bring plenty of layers. While it was freezing, it wasn't so cold that walking around was a problem. However, there was something off about Sapporo, the capital city and Japan's fifth largest, and host to the Winter Olympics in 1972; tourists were flocking in from the non-stop flights, but we were the only people walking around. Where were all the tourists?


Sapporo is a decent-sized city, I'd say around Amsterdam size, and that it is set in a grid formation makes it a breeze to navigate. Firstly, we checked into the hotel, the Monterey. We had a different hotel each night as we were travelling around, and had to book whatever was available; as it was all part of a package, it didn't make much difference to the price and at least we wouldn't have to stay somewhere if it was bad two nights in a row. The hotel was beautiful, trying to reenact the Sherlock Holmes period, and the room was a good size.


It was just before lunchtime so we dumped our bags and headed out to explore. The first stop was down to the symbol of the city, the Clock Tower. Constructed in 1878 with the clock added three years later, the building served as the drill hall of the Sapporo Agricultural College.


Next on to the Saporro Beer Museum, nestled in the popular red brick warehouse style, for lunch and, err, beer. One of the most delicious meals in Japan is, phonetically spelt, Jin-gis-kan. It is a cook-it-yourself hot plate in the centre, the same as yaki-niku with the vegetables (potatoes, onions, cabbage, leeks, beansprouts etc) but the main meat being lamb. My favourite! For a decent price, it was all you could eat, plus we had Sapporo Beer - yummy.


A bit of research later and I found out that jin-gis-kan is a twisted pronunciation of Genghis Khan! The lamb dish can be translated as a Mongolian BBQ; good fact for quizzes.

Sufficiently stuffed, we went to find the Sake Museum, which of course is a requesite following beer! The snow-lined roads were incredible; luckily it had stopped snowing before we arrived and the sky was pretty blue. Still, no-one around; it was like a ghost town.


We had a free sample of sake, I prefer warm, and bought some sake flavoured sweets. An acquired taste I guess but they quickly become moreish.

The roads were all quite wide and required a lot of patience as each crossing had a traffic light, which we always seemed to just miss. Along one of the horizontal main streets, halfway or so down is a huge park which breaks the city up and adds a bit more open space to it. Odori Park is home to a Snow Festival in the height of Winter, with lots to see. Sadly we missed it as the snow was beginning to thaw and most of the ground was sludgy ice. Still, some pics just to show what it would look like in Winter and Summer:


In the middle of Odori Park is Sapporo TV tower; it's not very impressive compared to any capital city towers around the world due to its size.


Before heading back to the hotel to defreeze for an hour or so, we walked past the Hokkaido Government Building, careful of the possible avalanche.


After it turned dark, we ventured back out and down past the TV Tower, and stopped at Susukino, the entertainment district which was bustling. We ate ramen in the appropriately named Ramen Alley.


Then we worked out where everyone was: although the weather was decent for us, Winter is too cold to be above ground. A whole underground network, covering the centre of Saporro, stretches from the station to Susukino with shops, walkways and links to the small metro system. So while we were braving the cold abover ground, the rest of Sapporo was nice and warm underground! How very Fantastic Mr Fox of the city.


Sapporo is a beautiful city, and worth exploring for a day but you don't need any more than that. It's a very well-set up area, manageable and more practical than Tokyo in ways. For being in the same country, they are worlds apart; in size, population, pace... the cold makes me sleepy, zzzz...
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Thought I'd stick these in, some of me by the TV Tower and on the (melting) snow: