Day 13: Sapporo Day 2: Ishiya Chocolate Factory + Sapporo Beer Museum

Today was a totally food-orientated day (yeah... very different from our other days, we know). We woke up to snow pouring down from the sky outside (not in our hotel room, that would be too disturbing). Neither of us expected it this early in December & thus were unfortunately, not fully dressed appropriately for the situation... crap...

its snowingggg!! *insert funny dance*

Breakfast: At local Lawson's convenience store

Rah: Pork onigiri, that the lady nicely heated up for me in the microwave. Very yummy.
Dee: Chicken instant noodles. The egg starts off at this inch-wide 1cm high block of yellow, sitting on top of noodles. It suddenly reconstitutes to strings of egg. I don't know how the japanese do it, but this proves they are leaders in innovation.

Stop 1: Ishiya Chocolate Factory, aka Shiroi Koibito Factory.

Probably the producer of Hokkaido's most famous non-natural-growing export - the Shiroi Koibito chocolate biscuit. Shiroi Koibito, for those of you who don't speak japanese, translates to "White Lovers" & was apparently the term used by the creator of the factory to describe the snow (since Hokkaido is snow country after all).
They were, (sorry if you like them) sickeningly sweet (but then, i don't have much of a sweet tooth).

Luckily (& also randomly), this place also housed a gramophone & vintage toy museum.

Another attraction is the host of mini houses they had scattered around the park. Dee insisted on going into nearly all of them. Even tho they were made for children & the doors were half her size...

Lunch:



Location: Goodies from exploring a local supermarket.
Food:
1. Fried Chicken in yellow sauce
2. Fried Chicken cutlet in sweet brown sauce with ?potato salad on top

After 13 days in Japan, we still don't know what we are eating. I'm not even going to try.
Thankfully, dessert had a name. We've been meaning to try this one since when we first spotted it in on Day 1...

3. Haagen Das "Salty Butter Biscuit" flavour.
ie. Like those butter cookies you had in the blue round tin as a kid. YUM. The icecream itself is slightly salty vanilla goodness, as creamy as you would expect from this brand. In the centre, as you dig, there is biscuit!! miraculously, you can dig through the "biscuit" easily with the plastic spade and it seems one with the icecream. It tastes a little of undercooked dough, but the majority of the taste is "biscuity" not "doughy". There seemed to be multiple bits of biscuit <1cm.>
Stop 2: Sapporo Beer Museum


Sapporo is, interestingly, where Sapporo Beer is produced (well, duh). Sapporo beer is also the only beer that Clara had liked the taste of. We learned about how beer was produced & the history of beer in japan. Basically beer is made from hops and barley which is roasted into diff gradings giving us our different ales. Fermentation happens. It is pasturised. This is beer.
Then we got to taste 3 types of beer that they produce:


1. Black Label - Rah's Fav, very transparent looking and tasting. Not much of a foamy head.
2. Classic - Dee's Fav. It's been produced exclusively in Hokkaido since 1985, and is a favourite of the region. Its more bitter and astringent than the first.
3. Kaitakushi - It was ok. Don't remember it much... :)

Needless to say, we were both a bit giggly afterwards.
Highly recommended for both educational and historical value, and the fresh beer on tap to taste. I must commend the museum on the high quality of exhibition, loads of little models, along with English translations. Free entry to museum, beer tasting was reasonably priced. Top notch. They also sold "Beer Jelly" in the gift shop. Can't tell you what it tastes like- its not mine!

Dinner: Donburi

Location: Apia underground shopping centre
Food:
Dee: Gyudon (ie beef) + mini udon (Y430). I can't believe what value this is. Taste was passable, but it was what I paid for - a big bowl of hot rice with beef and vermicilli noodles on top. I thought the Gyudon was a little dry, I added chilli spice for extra taste. Udon was simple but good, even the stock was good. 7/10
Clara: Oyakodon + mini udon (Okayo = "mother & child" ie chicken + egg... name is possibly a bit disturbing). Very yummy, egg was still a bit runny (the best!) Udon was quite nice. 8/10

Day 4: Kobe 1

Today we ventured to the far-away city of Kobe... a whole 30min train ride away....

Breakfast:

Location: a nice bakery on the way to the station.
Most popular food: saku saku MELON PAN! one of Clara's favourite things food-wise. it's bread with cookie dough on top, sometimes flavoured with melon (ie honeydew-like melon) flaouring. this one had sugar sprinkled on top of it. YUM =)! 4/5

Task 2: finding the ShinKobe Ropeway to get to a viewing platform & the herb garden.
MAJOR fail, after wandering the station lost, we asked the nice lady @ the visitor information to find out that it's closed for renovation....

Task 2, take 2: visiting Western houses dotted around Kobe.
Background: Kobe is a big port and business center of Japan. Particularly, it used to attract lots of expatriates and hence the culture is a little more westernised.
This included houses with names such as "The English House" & "The Club of Excellent", & appeared to all have been converted to wedding places.... quite a nice walk, until torrential rain came down on us.
luckily Clara brought an umbrella. unfortunately, this umbrella had lived inside a suitcase for the better part of the last 3 years & hadn't been tested. it majorly died in its final battle with the rain, leaving us partially soaked, to be saved by a conveniently placed Family Mart, stocking many 500yen umbrellas.
We are now proud owners of a VERY japanesey see through umbrella.
For example, we can death glare at everyone through our umbrella.

Lunch: Kobe beef ... in Kobe

"IKE-SOMETHING-YA-DAI"
(There is one character we don't know how to read. The word for run in chinese.)
Location: Sannomiya
Kobe beef is somewhat pricey to say the least. But we absolutely HAD to eat it. After all, thats why Dee insisted on going to Kobe. Its like a special breed of black Wagyu cattle. Popular belief has it that they are fed beer and massaged in sake daily, but Wiki disproved this fact much to my dismay.
We decided to try find Kobe beef for lunch, as these sets are generally cheaper than dinner by at least 2/3rds. Wandering around the station after the torrential rain, we decided to sit down to dry off. We covered at least 300m of shops and restaurants before finally choosing this one - and it as a good choice!
Food: Kobe Beef Set
1. Nine starters arranged 3X3 on a square tray, the central point being the chawamushi with cute little mushrooms.
2. Five decent bites of Kobe beef on a hot plate, with special rice and miso soup.
Kobe beef is tasty. very tasty. The way beef should be - rich and beefy.
I'm glad we didnt fork out for a full steak as the taste would have probably been overwhelming.
The starters were brilliant and showed off an array of cooking styles. We polished off all the starters and during our eating of the beef they brought us each another 8 starters (minus the chawamushi)... thats insane!! we couldn't finish it all. Clara said that at some restaurants they keep refilling if you empty the whole plate.
10/10 for experience, variety and refilling of amazing food. YUMO.

Between meal stop 1: The Hakutsuru Sake Brewery Museum
Luckily after lunch, it had stopped raining & we made our way to the only sake brewery in the area (famous for them) to have free entry & free sake tasting, why wouldn't we have chosen this one? After learning about the making of sake - which seemed to consist of pouring rice/beaten rice/liquid from one container to another container & repeat over & over again, - we proceeded to (accidentally) trick the ppl into giving us multiple samples of the tasting sake.
don't worry, we didn't get drunk. Despite strong taste, sake is usually only about 12% alcohomol.


Between meal stop 2: UCC coffee museum

Incredibly rushed for time today, plus this wasn't in our itinerary. Yet, how could we pass up the opportunity to visit a Coffee Museum when Dee spotted it on the tourist map?? We wizzed through 6 (small) levels and learnt about coffee bean growth, distribution, roasting, processing, brewing... the information was endless. Thankfully they only translated about 1% of endless into English. At the end, Clara and I had to do a computer quiz on the museum, which was incredibly hard considering above. We then went to a photo booth for our picture to be printed on a commemorative certificate. If we got 5/5 we'd be "Great Doctorate of Coffee". I guess we'll just have to be content with our MBBS's for now.

Snack: Waffle

Location: Sannomiya Station outside Port Liner
Waffles are good. Belgium waffles even better.
Waffle shop with big line is good. Especially if consistent over 2 periods of observation in same day. Add chocolate- very good.
After lining up for 15 minutes most people bought boxes to take home or as gifts.
The man serving us had to triple check that the two of us just wanted ONE (language barrier anyone?).
Unfortunately cold, would've been better hot.
And if we were actually in Belgium.

Dinner

Dinner was alright. Not much to say.
Was too tired to pay much notice (shock horror!).
Clara had curry udon. It was nice.
Filling enough to recharge us for standing in line for the next 2 hours.

Kobe Luminarie
Somehow we managed to make it into a city during a time when a festival was actually happening. Kobe Luminarie is a festival of lights which is gifted by Italy every year following the Kobe earthquake to give them hope.


Task 1: finding the end of the line to get into the event. It seemed that half the city's roads was closed off just for the lines.
(try not to lose Denise)
Task 2: photo-ing & enjoying the lights - nice!
(try to remind Denise not to wander off)
Task 3: follow our noses to the food:
(Denise will be at food)
so it seemed that this was a festival proper, with endless stalls of food (like any good japanese festival), we went round & round & ate a (small) selection of them, we even found shaker fries for Denise (one of Dee's fav things EVER). If only we had known about the food before we ate dinner.



Conclusion: we LOVE Japanese festivals.