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!

Day 11: Tokyo 3: Kappabashi + Odaiba

Breakfast


From local convenience store (called MiniStop)
Dee: "Smart Boss" + layered round cake
Rah: Kirin Special Afternoon tea + CheesePizza-man (manju)

The usual goodness expected. 3/5
The "Smart Boss" is not my favourite BOSS. A tad bitter, no creamyness.

Kappabashi
Kappabashi, supposedly also known as Kitchen Town (thanks google!), is a street near Asakusa station in Tokyo. Its basically a very long street of kitchen / restaurant supplies shops. Including: ceramics, lacquerware, glassware, restaurant signage, professional plastic food displays, uniforms, etc. Its much more interesting than it sounds on paper!! Of note, Dee acquired a new knife :)


Ramen Lunch


Once again, after a manic 3 hours of kitchen goods shopping, Clara and I were delirious from exhaustion. We hit a ramen joint next to the station which had a few locals in it.
Location: Opposite the intersection of exit A1 at Asakusa subway station
Food:
1. Miso Ramen
2. Shio Ramen
3. Soft Boiled egg to share.
Yum.
Score: 8/10. Noodles were thicker than usual, but still tender and al dente. Stock was tasty, not too grainy. Veges were crisp, roast pork was perfectly fatty.

Odaiba
We visited Odaiba to take photos of the Fugi TV building, which is so very prominent in Digimon. Its this awesome building looking like a grid with a huge sphere in the middle of it.

When we arrived, we saw.... the statue of liberty.... um.... were we in the right country? did the train take us to USA instead of just to the island? (turns out Odaiba has a mini-version of it)




We were lucky to have clear skies and watch the sunset along with 20 other photography nuts armed with SLRs and tripods and the like. Together we froze in the cold, until survival of the fittest, one by one they went back inside until the final few fought for the best spots.

We gave up after dark, and warmed our hands with another can of hot Boss Coffee window shopping at Aqua City.

Okonomiyaki Dinner



Location: Fugetsu, Odaiba Aqua City
Food:
1. Butsu (ie Pork) Okonomiyaki
2. Ebi (ie Prawn) "Modern" Okonomiyaki (ie with noodles)

Score: 8.5/10, okonomiyaki always hits the spot. It was also a different experience to the last one as they cooked it in front of us..... unfortunately, it also meant that it seemed to take longer than usual to cook.... the guy kept coming, doing something, then saying "Mou chotto" (ie a bit longer) for ages & ages, until finally he put on (heaps of) mayo & okonomiyaki sauce & said "Hai, ittadakimasu". The wait was well worth it tho =), we were both stuffed & actually had trouble finishing it (either really generous portion sizing, or we really shouldn't have had those boss coffees).

Day 10: Tokyo 2: Ghibli + Akihabara

Breakfast: Bagel & Bagel


Location: Lumine 2, Shinjuku Station
Clara remembered this shop's food fondly from her last Japanese visit. (& you must admit, the name is quite amusing.... at least we thought so)
Food:
1. Dee's mayo-prawn on plain bagel & teriyaki chicken on pepper bagel
2. Rah's mentaiko-egg on cheese bagel & cream cheese on chocolate bagel
Final score: 3.5. Clara found her mentai-egg (ie. spicy cod roe + egg) bagel a bit strange "I don't think it belongs on a bagel...". But the bagels themselves were fantastic, just not the filling. We'd recommend probably going for unfilled bagels (of which there are 10+ varieties including green tea...)

Ghibli Museum
Location: Mitaka
For our ignorant readers, Ghibli studios produced such childhood animated classics as My Neighbour Totoro, Laputa, Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away, amongst many others. The content of the museum as well as the building and surrounding garden is awe-inspiring. If you've watched these as a child, or have any artistic talent, interest in animation or cartoons, you must visit this when next in Tokyo. Its both our second times to the museum and it's as every bit as good as the first.


Lunch on the Go
Japanese people are awfully busy metropolitan people.

Since we spent so much time at the museum, we thought we'd catch up by eating lunch on the train. One thing I LOVE about Japan is it's abundance of specialty shops. There are often shops only specialising in selling ONE food item. The only equivalent in Sydney is probably in its dessert department (eg. cupcakes on Pitt), or juice bars. But I digress.
We were SO lucky to come across two such stores in Mitaka station. As in, they ONLY sell one type of rice-things (denise wrote sushi - but onigiri is not sushi, so we changed it)! You know the food must be top quality, otherwise they'd never sell their one product.

"ENMUSUBI"
Location: Inside gates, Mitaka JR Station
Specialty: Onigiri
Food:
1. Salmon Onigiri
(Their #1 best seller, and for good reason too)
2. Prawn Tempura Onigiri
(First time i've seen this in any onigiri shop, and its amazing)
Rate: 9/10


"MAMEDA"
www.mameda.co.jp
Location: Outside gates, Mitaka JR Station
Specialty: Inarizushi
Food:
1. Inarizushi Sampler
(4 of the 5 types of traditional inari's they sell, with different skins and fillings. I particularly liked wasabi filling and a deep chocolate coloured sweet soya sauce marinated tofu skin)
2. 2X Mini Tako-Inarizushi
(Half the size of normal. They are meant to be inari-zushi versions of takoyaki, and are even in specially small 1-inch tofu pockets that I've never seen before! Complete with octopus and a bit of ginger inside)
Rate: 9/10
Must try if you're a fan of Inarizushi. This is the first inarizushi specialty shop i've seen in my 9 days + previous travel in Japan.


Akihabara
= the electronic capital of Tokyo.
Akihabara is to Japan as Mong Kok is to Hong Kong (it's more like Ap Liu Gai in certain elements, but denise refused to type that). Sort of anyway.


As we exited the station, we saw more caucasians than usual and one guy holding an LCD monitor packaged only in bubble wrap. We knew we were in the right place.
We spent our time wandering the streets, amusing ourselves with the variety of wireless mice, iPhone covers, USB sticks (imitating the shape of sushi, guitars, humping dogs and cute monkeys which you behead to reveal the USB stick bit). Anyway...

We also visited Tokyo Anime Centre, which was a bit of a let down.
Like Den-Den town of Osaka, there are a few anime specialty shops scattered amongst the electronics. It seems they share the same audience of male shoppers, but these appear of a younger age - maybe it's the time of day? The 6-floored "Animate" seems to be a good one to visit if you're into Anime.

Shinjuku
Dinner was at an Izakaya.
Izakaya are drinking places that offer a variety of small dishes, such as robata (grilled food), salads and finger food. It is probably the most popular restaurant type among the Japanese people. Izakaya tend to be informal, and the people at one table usually share all dishes, rather than ordering and eating individually.
(http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2036.html)

We ordered:

1. Chicken skewer with mentai topping (spicy cod roe)
   
2. Chicken-skin skewer
3. Chicken-cartilage karaage
   
4. Hot chips on a hot plate of 3 sausages
5. Rice cake & Tofu in stone pot
6. Udon-carbonara

Rating:7.5/10
Quite an unexpectedly filling meal, and all the dishes were quite nice. the Udon carbonara was surprisingly good & of course, chicken skewers always does the trick. It also helped that some lady passed us a 500yen-off voucher as we walked in the building. It was just quite unfortunate that the entire place smelled of smoke, luckily the couple that sat next to us did not smoke (there anyway).

After Dinner Shopping:
After that satisfying meal, we were off to Muji. If you don't know what Muji is, then you have likely been living under the preverbial rock that is Australia & have never ventured into an asian country.
Muji is a shop that sells EVERYTHING. "Muji is distinguished by its design minimalism, emphasis on recycling, avoidance of waste in production and packaging, and no-logo or "no-brand" policy." Unfortunately for them, Muji has become a brand in its own right.
Clara especially loves their pens & storage things. After getting kicked (politely) out of the store (as we stayed till closing-time), we wandered back to our hotel to write to you lovely ppl.... if anyone is actually reading this thing.

Day 9: Tokyo 1

Breakfast

Location: Lawson’s outside Shinjuku Subway

Food:

1. Dee – Onigiri with ?filling (only labelled with jap!). I picked the yellow one. It turned out to be tamago (egg) and seasoned soya sauce rice. Should’ve guessed. Anyway, it was interesting. Like eating half boiled egg on rice, only in a triangle shape. Not my fav. Possibly also Egg number 5 in light of Katsudon, onsen egg and hardboiled egg in last 48 hours. Hypercholesterolemia here I come!

2. Rah- Tuna mayo pan = Yum. Very nostalgic for honkie flavours.

Drinks: Kirin Lemon Tea is very asian – almost non-sweet and very thirst quenching. Clara’s coffee-tea mixture in a can – she said it was nice but she is not to have it again as it gave her palpitations.

ShinYokohama Raumen Museum

It is apparently “the first food theme park in Japan”. By food theme park they mean an interesting accumulation of about 15-20 food stalls which mostly sell ramen. It’s divided into two theme areas (1) Ramen restaurant mall and (2) “a 1:1 replica of a section of Tokyo in the year Showa33 (1958)”. By which they mean that they decorated the 15-20 food stalls in a retro theme. Its quite amazing the amount of effort they put in (CF photos – which, unfortunately are still not uploading). There’s even vintage lolly stores and a little amusement area with shoot the can much like the Royal Easter Show. Oh, and did I mention the 5 minutely air-raid sirens going off overhead?

We chose a tonkotsu ramen specialty store to eat at.

Food:

1. Special Tonkotsu ramen

2. Miso Tonkotsu ramen – Very interesting. The lip-smaking-collagen-ness of a tonkotsu base, but it has the OOMPH which I find is often missing, the underlying flavour is stronger and not just “fatty”. The corn was a nice touch and also made the soup base sweet. Its hard to describe, the balance, but I loved it.

Shibuya

We needed to go somewhere to kill time before our next activity… so we went to Shibuya, mainly known as a ginormous shopping district. We visited a CD shop and got a few each, Clara her Japanese ones, Dee just some English CD’s I’d been meaning to get all year. I did get a Japanese Edition of Jamiroquai’s Rock Dust Light Star – with a bonus 6 tracks (2 new singles, 4 remixes/live versions)… guess who it’s for David Chan?? :)

Bunraku – Traditional Japanese Puppet Theatre

Besides the 3-5 meals we have daily, there is time between meals which Clara and I need to kill. I decided about a month ago it would be nice to see some traditional Japenese puppetry (centuries old) which I’d learnt about during my puppeteering days. Each main puppet takes 3 operators to operate, they stay on stage dressed entirely in black, and everyone except the head puppeteer of each character must also cover their head with a black hood. They have completely blank looks and train since they are as young as 14 to be part of the national academy.

As they were ancient Japanese literature, thank God we had English in-ear commentary to help us understand what’s going on.

Unfortunately it went for a whole 4 hours with 2 intermissions. The pace was a little slow at points. Our favourite was the scenes where the puppets where comically fighting and hitting each other on the head with sticks, but mostly its boring monologue.

Dinner at 9:30pm

We were so tired and hungry we went to the nearest open restaurant and stuffed our faces with an assortment of dishes. I can’t say we tasted any of what we ate. I am struggling to remember (just kidding!) but we didn’t take pictures. Not particularly memorable anyway. =(