This is part 3 of our Sapporo trip. Links to Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them:
Day 2 of our Sapporo adventure started out with a traditional Japanese breakfast at the hotel. I don't know much about the food other than it wasn't anything much like a breakfast we'd be used to. I had pasta salad, veggies/roots, fruit with yogurt...I also had some rice and they had eggs, miso soup, some sort of sausages and salad as other options. After breakfast we headed to the train station to find our way to Otaru. Otaru has a few sites to see including its blown glass factories, a canal, a music box museum, and a brewery. They also have a festival every winter called the Otaru Snow Light Path Festival which overlaps with the Sapporo Snow Festival. It happened to be going on when we visited but we didn't know it at the time. We just thought they put beautiful lights out along the streets and in the canal every day! Once we arrived in Otaru it was lunch time and there was a Burger King right in the train station, we hadn't eaten at a Japanese BK yet so we checked it out. They had a couple limited edition items which I took pictures of. I had one of the regular Japanese menu items, a teriyaki chicken sandwich...it was good, but nothing special.
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| Breakfast... |
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| Special NY Whopper or BK Ringo with apple slices and other stuff... |
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| How about a highball (whiskey drink) or Heineken with your meal??? |
From lunch we went out to explore Otaru. I had found a few places online that I wanted to check out (antiques/kimonos), but unfortunately the directions were vague and we weren't able to find them. We also weren't able to find the music box museum. Part of the problem was that it was too cold to have my gloves off for long to use my phone and continue to google so we just let it go. (Later realized the problem with the directions were that they were written for someone walking from Minamiotaru Station, but whoever wrote them said Otaru Station...2 different places!) We did find the famous canal and also the district of glass shops. I was really set on trying to blow glass because I'd read that there were several locations that allowed tourist to try it. Another failure...we couldn't find a single place that advertised it. Couldn't even find a place where we could watch someone do it! We ended up wandering the streets up and down through different stores (some more than once) trying to find the perfect glass souvenir to take home. Ended up with something I don't love and a few wasted hours...sigh. I know Keenan was frustrated, as was I. We made our way back from the glass district toward the canal and found the Otaru Brewery, again after having to do some wandering first. I felt like all the directions I found to places in Otaru were horrible! Usually we don't have so many problems finding places.
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| Sign says "Sorry we're OPEN." |
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| So this is weird! The character is called "Marimokkori" and he is the mascot of the island of Hokkaido. "Marimo" is the word for a green algae ball that is found in the lakes on Hokkaido. "Mokkori" is the word for erection. I guess when you put those together you get this guy... and he was everywhere! Haha! |
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| Before heading into the brewery. Beautiful! |
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| This pic was to show how deep the snow was. |
After our beer stop we kind of had to rush to catch a train back to Sapporo. Ahhhh, look what was happening on the canal! It was soooo beautiful! Unfortunately my camera took even worse pictures than my phone did and I didn't have time to try taking any more. So sad we didn't get to enjoy the festival a little more. (Even though we didn't know it was a festival at the time!) There were candles in ice molds along every street and pretty displays in front of every house and business. Many of the ice molds had little trinkets or flowers/leaves frozen inside.
Here's why we had to rush back to Sapporo. We wanted to see the snow sculptures lit up and make it to the Sapporo Bier Garten for dinner!
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| "Taiwan ~ Tradition and Modern" Left - Taipei 101 Center - The National Palace Museum Right - Taiwan High Speed Rail |
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| "Winter Sports Paradise, Hokkaido!" |
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| "Sultan Abdul Samad Building located in Kuala Lumpur." |
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| "Mausoleum of Itmad-Ud-Daulah, located in India." |
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| "Hirake! Ponkikki" |
And then we set out on our last adventure of the day...we headed toward the Sapporo Bier Garten. Of course the best "route" that we could find involved taking a train to a station that was still 900m from the brewery...sigh...we had been walking all day...what's another 1/2 mile in the pouring snow??? We were both crabby and hungry by this point. It was a little after 7pm when we left Odori Park and almost 8pm when we started cooking our food. But I'd say it was totally worth it! Sapporo Bier Garten has a couple different restaurants. We went to the Genghis Khan Hall for the all you can eat Jingisukan & all you can drink fresh beer. I was just under $40 per person for 100 minutes. "Jingisukan" (Genghis Khan) is the Japanese term for a grilled mutton dish. We had the choice of 2 types of meat, fresh lamb and/or traditional Genghis Khan which was frozen lamb. We had lots of each, plus all the vegetables (cabbage, onion, squash and bean sprouts) we wanted. We each had a beer (or few) too!
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| This pic didn't focus well, but wanted to show the amount of snow on a typical Sapporo sidewalk. That's Keenan in the distance. |
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| Sapporo Brewery |
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| My hair was icicles. It was snowing so hard! |
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| Finally getting started cooking our meal! |
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| Our bibs were awesome! |
After dinner we found our way back to Odori Park. While eating I had found a bus route to take us back. We had to wait at the bus stop with some drunks (who would expect that, right outside a brewery?!) for the bus to arrive, but it was much better than walking 1/2 mile back to a train station! By the time we made it back to the park it was long after the sculptures' lighting had been shut down. We were surprised to see that the Olympic sculpture was still lit up. As we got closer we realized that it was getting a cleaning! The snow had let up, so the Japanese Self Defense Force was sweeping off the fresh snow to re-reveal the details. I feel like this is the only picture that actually does the size of the sculptures any justice! Those guys look so tiny!
Up next: Sapporo Snow Festival 2014 - Part 4
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