Hoi Hokkaido pt1: Sapporo & Otaru

Hoi Hokkaido! We went to Hokkaido for 2 weeks to travel around and see a side of Japan we hadn’t seen before. And it was amazing. We had a direct flight to Tokyo and then 1 hour to pick up our luggage, change terminals, check in our luggage, catch another plane on the domestic terminal – YES I WAS STRESSED – but actually the airport personnel was so helpful and nice, and it seemed they even delayed our plane for 15 minutes so we could make it. We saw Fuji from the plan as well! Great start of our holiday :)

Sapporo is a big city famed for its seafood, Hokkaido beer and ramen. So we were in for a treat! The first day we arrived around 3 and explored the city a bit, and the second day we visited some of the famous landmarks.

But for breakfast, we went to the fishmarket! And ofcourse, there was crab everywhere.

The market is located inside and around a block of buildings, so imagine tiny alleyways full of small marketstalls and restaurants and the smell of fresh crab everywhere, so cool!
oooo delicious!!
And YES ofcourse we had a bowl of this goodness, in a tiny bar inside the market, and it was the best seafood I had in my life:

And after this delicious breakfast, we got some coffee in one of the many amazing coffeeplaces in Sapporo. Supergood and when we left, the staff waved us goodbye outside (yes, that happened)

Next up was a visit to the Sapporo tv tower! Very famous, beautiful views, but the best thing about it must be their mascotte, which is basically that tower with a moustache. I’m holding a plushie of him on this nice photo we had taken :D Ward is holding Hokkaido’s most famous mascotte, the little bird called ” Shima Enaga” or Snow Faery.

The Tower is a landmark in Sapporo and there is a huge park surrounding it.

It was around 30 degrees, which was really hot for Hokkaido, but somehow it stayed around that temperature our whole trip, there will be some sweaty photos XD
The views from the tower are amazing, showing the park and mountains surrounding Hokkaido. The tower itself has a small shrine where again you can meet the mascottes of the tower (who look more like red bananapeels, but they are in fact, the tower, and it is a whole family with moustached father, mother and their son. You could also do a multilayered stamp on the tower which was really cool!

So after this nice trip we went underground, since, just like Osaka, Sapporo has a massive underworld with streets and shops and basically an underground city. And if that sounds Cyberpunk, there are even robots patrolling in the underground city…

Huge numbers on the walls tell you where you are, it really is a Cyberpunk experience!
So we exited at “6” and we made our way to Hokkaido University and is beautiful botanical garden, but not before we got some icecream, and I forgot to tell you but CORN is also a very Hokkaido thing! So ofcourse there is corn icecream.

The university had tons of free exhibitions, and was basically open to wander around, which was really cool! There was an insect exhibition and that made me very happy.

Some really weird stuff as well, in their dentistry department XD

Afterwards we explored the botanical gardens and parks.

We headed back to the city centre to got to a beerfest!

We ordered a thing that looked like a huge Dutch bitterbal, while on the speakers there was an endless beersong that repeated the brand name with stuff like ” I want to drink it!” ” it is delicious”! We didn’t order any beer hahaha

For dinner we knew we HAD to go to famous ‘ramen alley’, and old street full of ramenshops (and lots of tourists), so we waited for a while in line until we got our spot at a tiny shop and ordered a corn butter ramen (very Hokkaido), and a garlic ramen.

Really good haha and we got some nice aprons.

We walked around the city for the evening soaking in all the neon lights!

Lots of bars in our neighborhood!
And the one and only Nikka man in the back!
And ofcourse or little Snow Faery who we will see a lot throughout our holiday
And that was day 1 :D

The next day we travelled to the coastal town of Otaru! This little town is famous for its old streets, industrial buildings and sushi restaurants.

To kick things off there was a taiko event so drumming sounds everywhere
Some huge and old warehouses line the canals of Otaru, and there are small alleyways and streets with tiny foodshops.

As it was superhot, we decided that now was the time to try to famous Hokkaido Melon!

And yes, it is reaaaaally good, sweet and soft and the best thing during a heatwave. We explored the harbor a little bit after this nice break.

But it was so hot, it was time to get the best Japanese invention ever: The fan jacket. It is a jacket with built in fans, that cool you when you wear it. Does it work? YES
It is so cool (pun intended) and we brought it back to Sweden, but unfortunately it never is warm in Sweden XD

A lot of Kanji everywhere, which is kind of cool!
And then it was time for some sushi! We ordered full plates of all kinds, and really miss how outside of Japan it is usually salmon, tuna and shrimp and that’s it. Not here ofcourse, all kinds of fish and their eggs :D

We ordered some special snow crab sushi as well…

We got back to Sapporo in the evening to spend our last night to do some shopping and hang out in the park, like the rest of Sapporo!

Saying goodbye to Sapporo and planning for tomorrow’s start of our Hokkaido roundtrip <3