I got to start today later than normal because it was my
planned relax and hop around Sapporo day knowing that I would be flying back to
Tokyo the day after then trying to get almost directly to mount Fuji to start
the climb. With that in mind I knew that
a day without the risk of failing to get back to the hotel was the best option
for me.
I woke up really late for me, at 6:45 and then took my time
getting ready to get out the door. I
tried to sort out some of my packing for the flight so that I wouldn’t have to do
it later. I then headed out to the JR
Station to get breakfast. Guess
what? It was actually a reasonable
temperature today. I would say it rated at about 70 or so most of the day.
There was often a swift breeze coming along with it too so it was by far my
favorite weather day here even if it was a bit overcast most of the day. At the JR Station I hit the Mister Donut and
had a cream filled donut and a chocolate coconut donut along with a cup of
coffee. I thought the cream filled was lemon but I was wrong. Oh well.
After the donuts it was on to the Hokkaido University
Botanical Garden which I had been unable to visit on Monday. This time it was indeed open. It was a pretty
cool garden having all styles of plants set up in sections by format, such as
the rose garden which still had roses here (the Tokyo ones were finished) as
well as a marsh plants garden, shrubs, trees, herbaceous plants and the like. I
wandered through for reasonably over an hour and basically enjoyed the lazy
format of the visit. They also had a
small but very good Ainu museum which had a lot of artifacts from the
Ainu. If I have not mentioned before,
the Ainu are the aboriginal tribes to Hokkaido.
I assume they have integrated in by this point but I could be
wrong. I need to do more research on
them.
After the garden I headed over to the Sapporo Factory which
is a big mall. My intention was to find a small backpack for the hike that was
not too expensive. I had not succeeded in the time I had allotted in the US and
was going to have to go without if I couldn’t find one. This would pose
problems for layers I needed to bring but did not want to start with knowing
the heat. I did manage to find one for
about 30 bucks which I guess is the best I could hope for. Most of them were
$90 or higher which is insane. While in the factory I decided to have lunch at
a Japanese style hamburger place (this isn’t a burger joint). I actually had
the beef hash which was a shaved beef stew with mushrooms, carrots, onions and
a potato in a brown gravy served over a large helping of white rice. It was
actually very good. I rounded that out with a Sapporo beer of course. After lunch I tried to head to the Sake
Museum, which I found but it turned out it wasn’t really a museum at all but
rather a shop which was really disappointing especially because with nothing in
English it all could have just said sake on the bottles and nothing else. There wasn’t even a chance of sampling
without having to order and pay which meant I had no idea what I was getting if
I tried to so I passed.
From the ‘museum’ I headed to the Nijo Fish Market which was
a small market but bigger than the one in say Kanazawa. I walked through it to
see what they had and it was mostly various forms of crab. Not so much anything
else. After I was done there I headed
back to the room for a few minutes to put on some sunscreen which I had
forgotten to take with me as it was cloudy out in the morning but the sun was
starting to poke through. After a brief
stop I headed back out and this time decided to attempt to visit the full
circuit of Odari Park which before I made it too far I stopped at a Sapporo
Beer Garden and ordered a Yebisu Black and an order of edamame. When I was finished
with those I decided to have a Sapporo premium and an order of sausages to go
along with it. While I was finishing my beer an older Japanese man and his wife
came over and sat with me and we talked for maybe about 45 minutes. He was very
friendly and good natured. He spoke English reasonably well if at times a bit
haltingly. We talked about a lot of
stuff including the disasters in the country and 9/11 and so on. It was an
interesting conversation. Eventually though we both finished our beers and
headed on our own ways. I found the far
end of the park I hadn’t seen before and another small rose garden there. I
then headed back to the other end which is the Sapporo TV Tower and then headed
back to the main street in theory to search for some dinner. I didn’t rush
through any of this at all and made a couple detours through some shopping
arcades as I was poking around.
It turns out that there was some sort of “Grand Opening”
festival going on and not too far back from the park the main street was closed
off and a stage was set up. There were guys doing ice carvings as well. I was looking for the CoCoIchi which is a
Japanese style curry shop but I actually passed right by it without noticing
before I ran into the festival. I
watched the ice carving for a little bit then worked my way back and found they
were about to start some taiko drumming performances so I settled in and
watched a team of high school age girls and boys perform a couple songs before
they broke up that portion, presumably to start something else. They weren’t
very quick so I decided to go searching for the dinner I had initially started
out for and found the CoCoIchi and went in. It is right on the corner of the
main intersection but it is very small. I ordered a thinly sliced curry pork
over rice. I asked for a 4 on the heat scale of 6. It was good and reasonably
spicy. As with any time I have curry I had to have a beer and had a Kirin lager
which is pretty much what they served there.
When I was done I walked back down the street and found the carvings
were done and quickly got pictures of them all while they were melting then
headed back to the stage where it was obvious something was about to start
again.
It was more taiko drumming but this time it was a much
bigger presentation. They had 5 or maybe 6 teams. It was impossible to see all
of them at once. In some instances the whole lot of them played the same song
which was really impressive and in other times the individual teams did their
own songs. They were all really good. The team that I had seen as the warm up
earlier was there and they were probably the best of the lot. I didn’t really
want to get in too late but fortunately they stopped just around 8:00 so I didn’t
have to miss anything by leaving. I am sure more was going to go on but I
couldn’t really hang out with the fact I needed to finish getting packed and
prepared for the next day’s travel.
The pictures from today can be found here.
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