Hey Hive!
So if you missed the last couple of posts, we started recounting our final journey to Japan back in July 2019 when we decide to explore a new region and see Hokkaido in summer (since everywhere else in Japan is really hot during that period)!
For this trip, we didn't fly to Hokkaido directly, but instead flew to Tokyo and took the bullet train up to the highest part of the mainland which is in Aomori!
Last week, we started exploring a little bit of Aomori after taking a well-deserved and long nap in our hotel. We explored the neighbourhood mall and tried the local specialty - apple juice, before going to the pier and checking out the upper class restaurants here and walking on the bridge!
We had a very delicious and satisfying steak dinner before retiring for the night since we had to get up early for our train up to Hokkaido!
4 July 2019. Thursday.
We started the day off so nicely with our favourite breakfast from Daily Yamazaki! I've written about this before on one of our previous trips, but Daily Yamazaki is a convenience store in Japan and some of their outlets have a bakery section called "Daily Hot" that makes a whole assortment of buns and toast!
But our absolute favourite bread from them is this thicc toast with a nice sunny side egg in the middle, cheese and bacon slices! It's so savoury and tasty and a great way to start the day!
So when we saw that there was a Daily Yamazaki nearby we just had to buy it!
Our train was at 9am so we had to check out and set off for the station pretty early. But we did see some interesting sights along the way, including this interesting Show Street sign:
There was also this huge office building that resembled old shopping centres in Singapore.
But pretty soon we were back at the nearby train station!
We boarded the train at about 9am and thankfully it was pretty empty because even our luggage had seats!
So we had to take the train to the Shin-Aomori train station since that one has a bullet train platform that would take us up to Hokkaido and when we arrived we had some down time before our shinkansen arrived.
So we said goodbye to our samurai friends made of paper mach:
As well as these unique apple darumas!
Pretty soon our train arrived! By the time we boarded it was almost 10am. But we had plenty of time to relax on the train to Sapporo. It was really foggy as we traveled higher up Japan.
The view wasn't too spectacular but it was a very smooth journey.
And about 5 hours later, we arrived in Sapporo! This was the very huge train station that was linked to what I imagine is the biggest mall here.
We opted to stay in an Airbnb here since it's more affordable and tbh more comfortable too since the hotel rooms in Japan can be quite small compared to a whole apartment.
So we made our way to the apartment asap so we could dump our luggage before exploring the city!
It wasn't a big apartment, but we still had more space here than in the hotel room for sure. And it was pretty clean and comfortable!
After we dumped our stuff, we went out into the street and saw these adorable doggos going out for a walk!
It was late in the afternoon and we hadn't had lunch yet so we went out in search of some food!
And since it was one of the first places we found, we went to Sean's favourite place for mapo tofu - Gyoza Osho!
This time he decided to try their mapo tofu noodles and got their set which included 3 gyoza and a side of rice!
We've never tried mapo tofu noodles before so it was pretty interesting! I decided to go for one of their fried rice sets since I was more in the mood for rice. They had some soup, gyoza and karaage in this set!
And it was absolutely delicious! The fried rice was just a little bland, but with the chili oil and Sean's mapo tofu sauce it was really tasty! The gyoza was nice and crispy on the outside, steamed on the inside and the karaage was alright. But with how hungry we were it was really satisfying!
We went out into the city yet again to explore and walk off our very filling lunch.
We went out into the park in the middle of the city and there were all these very beautifully planted flowers!
There were multiple flower beds on this very well maintained little field along with a huge fountain!
I think this might be the town square because just behind the fountain was the Sapporo TV Tower, which is one of the iconic sights here with a viewing deck!
There was also these cute penguin statues in this little flower patch that looked so pretty!
We also saw this very official-looking building that looked like it came from somewhere in the US.
Turns out it's actually the former Hokkaido Government Office Building! It was constructed in 1888 and designed by technical officials to have an American neo-baroque style but built with local materials!
It definitely stood out a lot being so red, no wonder its nickname is Akarenga (meaning Red Brick).
Not too far from the government building was this pop-up summer festa! I'm not sure what event this was but the bar looked pretty classy I guess it was from/for the Sapporo branded beer. They might've been celebrating something or catering an event? Neither of us are beer drinkers so we wouldn't know.
After that we went to explore the huge mall near the station to see what other snacks we could get!
We went to go relax at this cafe and got a milk tea latte and a mango swirl ice cream, which was pretty alright. A little underwhelming tbh but still okay.
The department store had all these fancy looking caked including one made of the Hokkaido special melon!
There was also a Pokemon Center in the mall and of course we had to check it out!
I'm not a very big Pokemon fan anymore but I used to play the older generations and it was also the first game I ever played so it will always be special to me.
We didn't really buy anything there but it was nice to look at all the merchandise they had.
Especially the entire wall of plushies!
Just look at the Diglett and Dugtrio!
The next store we went to was equally important to my childhood - Snoopy!
Somehow we always find a Snoopy Town Shop everywhere we go in Japan! I actually didn't even know Snoopy was that huge until I visited Japan because we sure don't have stores like this in Singapore.
But it's so cool that Snoopy is so universal! I mean they have a whole Snoopy Museum here in Japan too!
They had these super soft mocchi plushies of Snoopy and his friends that I just had to pick it up for a pic! We didn't buy them though since we have a lot of plushies at home already. But now that I look at them again I remember them being really soft so maybe we'll pick them up next time we visit a Snoopy shop. XD
I really loved this wall decal too! It's unique to Sapporo and the ice skating fits since it's in Hokkaido.
We walked through this office building of sorts that had this huge fake safe for some reason.
We also spotted a map of the landmarks in Sapporo and turns out there's a Ropeway on the other side of the city!
And of course, we ended up in our favourite store! This one had a special lounge area for people to sit and relax so we rested our feet for a bit.
Not only was it our favourite store Donki Hote, but this one was a MEGA Donki! And it's not too far from our apartment too, how convenient!
We weren't too hungry for dinner since we had a big late lunch, so we shared a burger at Lotteria!
It was our favourite bacon burger from Lotteria, which I posit is still our favourite bacon burger that we've ever had.
After that we went for a nice walk back to Town Square where the lights on the Sapporo TV Tower were on!
It actually kinda resembled the Eiffel Tower a little bit but shorter and with a narrower base. It looked pretty though!
But I think that's going to be it for today! Tune in next week for more Sapporo exploration where we also visit a very special place!
Here's a teaser:
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels #169 (Japan 9.0 - Hokkaido): Midnight Munchies and Mall Crawling! 🍳
