Day 12: Sapporo 1: Sightseeing and Ramen Alley

(Yay, photos are uploading again)

Struggle to Sapporo

• We woke up early and got out of room early, having been all prepared and packed last night.
• We lived in Shinjuku washington, which has 25 floors with 6 elevators
• Apparently this is not sufficient for large exodus at 8:15AM.
• After waiting for 10 minutes where 2 choc-a-block lifts passed, Clara & I had a bright plan...
• We got on the next lift going UP, and travelled from 7 -->25 down to lobby.
• The flight took longer than expected secondary to turbulence and adverse weather conditions at Sapporo, so difficult to land.

Anyway.
We got there in one piece.
As opposed to last time, when they lost our luggage.

And of course, just as we were about to go onto the plane... a whole bunch of school kids filed in & lined up to... go onto the plane, it seems we can't escape them. Just in case we had forgotten to ever mention them, we have had school kids going to pretty much EVERY attraction we were at (a different bunch each time), including:
the aquarium, aqualiner, nissin museum, universal studios, ghibli museum, and now hokkaido.
so lucky to be a japanese school kid (... well, actually, no, they work too hard).

Lunch: Some food for sustanence

At 3pm, we were Too hungry. No food on plane as journey = 1.5 hours.
Being hungry usually leads to us getting grumpy at each other.
We headed to the nearest 7-11, got out some cash, and stuffed our stomachs and oesophaguses with warm food:
1. Dee's Oden
its like a pre-cooked hot pot/ingredients stewed in a clear broth, and you choose the individual bits you want. I chose

1. Big chunk of daikon (white radish)
   
2. Translucent gelatinous noodles tied up in a bunch
3. Sausage wrapped in fishcake
4. Fish cake (+ bits of shitake mushroom, lotus etc)
5. Miso paste + Mustard on the side

It was yum and mighty hot. Like 90 degrees hot. So hot i felt it burn a path thru my thorax as i swallowed, and had to stand outside in the bitter cold to eat the oden. For Y365 very good value. And it was SO good. Came with soup too! Ridiculously yum, maybe coz i was hungry. Oh well. It's a 9/10 in my books for the occasion.

2. Rah's Seafood Cup Noodle
Yeah, too hungry to taste it. Not as good as the Milk Seafood one, prob same as the seafood at home.

Sightseeing around Sapporo
Sapporo is the main city of Hokkaido, the upper island of Japan. Its cold, but thankfully we haven't arrived at the coldest time (Feb) when they have an ice sculpture festival!

(a) Clock tower

The tower is old. There is a clock on it. It is pretty.
Apparently it inspired lots of people in Hokkaido and is a symbol of the city's longevity and wisdom. Or something.

Used to be an agricultural school run by 3 caucasians, had about 100 pupils who when graduated had to serve and contribute to the city of Hokkaido. The history is immensely cool, a few of the teachers were Christian and as a result a lot of the pupils grew up with faith and went on to be devout Christians.

The school used to serve western meals to the boys, but after a few years they changed this to Japanese dinners in light of budget constraints, and reserved the western meals for the teachers.

(b) TV tower + Odori Park

This Nowhere near as tall as other towers that japan boasts, but it gave a nice night view of sapporo, & odori park (the main park of sapporo, & from which all the streets of sapporo are named - seriously, sapporo is a planned city, built grid-line & the streets are named north 1/2/3, south 1/2/3, east & west according to their coordinates from this park & TV tower).
Odori park currently boasts 1) German festival (recurring theme in japanese Christmas celebrations, it seems) 2) White Illumination - a display of lights, on a much smaller scale than Kobe Luminarie.

Snack: Icecream Location: under TV tower- in gift shop

We are crazy, eating ice cream in the coldest location we have visited in Japan
Yet, Hokkaido's specialty includes milk and its ice cream is renowned in Japan as the best.
(amongst these, Melon, bears, potatoes, seafood and especially scallops also seem to be specialties. OH and of course sapporo beer.)

The good things about eating icecream in freezing weather:
1. The ice cream does not seem so cold
2. The ice cream does not melt.
3. You cannot get an ice cream headache as you already had one before.

Clara opted for Soft Serve, with black soybean & rare caramel sauce (came with lumps of caramel). Yum, love soft serve.
4.5/5

I initially refused ice cream, until I saw "Lemon Pop" which was bright blue and had chunks of yellow. YUM. Oh, not to mention "Blueberry Cheesecake".
Pop Soda = icecream flavour of japanese lemonade / ramune soda. Its a really good tasting lemon sorbet which is unlike the Aussie one (cant describe how, its just less sticky, less sour and more tangy). Specks of icicles seem intentional. The yellow bits were HUGE chunks of Sherbet!!! AWESOME. its got to make it onto my top 3 fav icecreams EVER.
Blueberry Cheesecake = Tastes exactly like it. Quite a good flavour too, unique.
5/5

Dinner: Hokkaido Ramen Location: One of the individual stores in Ramen Alley

Food:
1. 2 bowls of Ramen with Huge Hokkaido Scallops

Now, let me tell you about Hokkaido scallops. They're bigger than anything you've seen- like 6cm diameter and 1.5cm thick. At least.
And its not like osyters, where the little tassie ones are packed full of punchy taste and big ones u get at chinese restaurants are tasteless and bland. These gigantic hokkaido scallops are have concentrated flavour too! They were butterflied and delicately grilled before being put into our ramen.
The noodles were a bit wrinkly and reminded me of chinese noodles- so me no like.
The stock was clear- so me also not like.
Clara says I should've asked for Miso stock though, fair call. Clara on the other hand, quite liked both the noodles (very al dente) & the stock, Denise is just being picky.

2. Gyoza.
Super thin skins, crunchy base, good dipping sauce.
The filling was super funky with specks of red chili powder as well as chunks of green chili. YUM, but needed to be more meaty.

Overall: 7.5/10

After Dinner
We did some shopping at the massive underground shopping complex: which happens to be called...

Now we are chilling over a sapporo beer and having an early night (its only 10PM!).

Tomorrow: Sapporo Beer Museum- here we come!