Day 22 Japan
A wee sleep in this morning then off to do Sapporo-y things. I think I said it in the previous post but I feel like Sapporo is one of those big cities that sort of fails at interesting things to do outside of eating and partying. Nevertheless! I managed to fill my day.
I began by trying to fill the third item on my chore list - thongs! Mine have worn very thin on the base and rocks are starting to stab my feet. I spent about 2 hours wandering around various shopping areas getting completely lost and found nothing. It's like they don't wear thongs when it's cold here! Pansies.
My first tourist stop is the Sapporo clock tower. It is the oldest standing building in Sapporo as it was built during the development of the city. It's apparently the symbol of the city. It's just an old building with a clock in it to me. There's a small museum on the ground floor with a bit of history of the clock tower and Sapporo which is OK. The second floor has an example of the gears and whatnot that make the clock go and some videos explaining how it works and is maintained. You can't see the actual clock disappointingly so that was a bit of a fizzer but it was an interesting enough hour I spent in there. They have a dedicated photographer out front of the building. A volunteer tourist guide stands out front and takes pictures of people with the clock tower in the background. Must be a satisfying job to get no money for.
The Autumn Festival is currently on in Odori Square which runs through the centre of town. It's basically a big food festival that showcases food from all the regions of Hokkaido. Each section of the park covers a different region. Pretty cool and it was pretty busy. Basically the same as any food festival anywhere. Local and regional restaurants setup in tents and charge stupid prices for average food. And people flock to it for something to do.
Honestly - for something touted as showcasing Hokkaido's best there really wasn't much there that interested me. Most stalls in a section served pretty much the same thing. I'd much rather go to a small restaurant somewhere and sit down at a nice table to eat my meal. I ended up getting a couple of small BBQ things and a meat volcano to eat. The meat volcano was BBQ beef wrapped around rice with a raw egg on top. It was pretty tasty and went well with a beer. And the clouds even cleared for a bit to let some sunshine through.
My next stop was the Sapporo Olympics Museum. Sapporo hosted the Winter Olympics in 1972 (I think) and at the site of one of the giant ski jumps they put an Olympics "museum". It's not much of a museum but it has an interactive floor which was great fun.
First thing I did was go to the top of the ski jump. They've turned it into an observatory where you get a great view of Sapporo city. You get a chair lift up to the top of the ski jump and that thing looks terrifying. Those people who ski down those things and jump off the end have balls of steel.
So the museum itself is really just a glorified excuse to play some computer games. The top floor has a few small exhibits around the Olympics. They've got a couple of timelines for the Olympics, Winter Olympics and Paralympics as well as some advertising campaigns for them and an example of a medal from each of the Olympic Games. Most of it is in Japanese so I couldn't read those bits but they did have a helpful English pamphlet for one section. There were also throughout the museum a bunch of different equipment Olympians used in various sports ... mostly winter sports given that's what Sapporo hosted. It was pretty cool to see them pushing the Paralympics really hard.
I did quite like the collection of medals. Was interesting to see how they change each time. My favourite was this one.
The real star of the show though was the bottom floor which was a bunch of interactive games for a few of the winter sports. Some were a bit shit but I had fun trying them all. There were 2 ski-jump games where you had to jump or move at the appropriate time to do a big jump. I managed a couple of decent ones. This is not one of them.
They also had one for cross-country skiing where you basically had to use a cross trainer to win a race against other players. The bobsled one you just had to get in a replica bobsled and lean in time with the video ... no points or anything so that was kind of shit. Speed skating you had to put on some socks and slide from side to side to mimic skating and race someone else. And the ice hockey on you had to be a goalie and defend from a shooter by moving from side to side.
Overall I really enjoyed the museum and would happily recommend it for a nice fun activity in Sapporo. Definitely go outside of peak season though. There were only a couple of people in there which meant I didn't have to line up for the games. Gets packed with school children on school tours during peak season the dude at the ski jump game was telling me.
The only real downer about it was that it took ages to get there. Almost an hour. Had to get a subway and a bus to get out there then walk up a hill to the museum which was annoying.
Since it took so long to get out there the only other thing I managed to check out that day was the Sapporo beer museum. It was pretty close to the centre of the city which is good. It's in a beautiful old red brick building with really nicely maintained grounds. It's a lot smaller than the Guinness Factory in Dublin so I reckon you could knock it off in about 30 minutes. It's really only 1 floor.
Unfortunately the times listed on the internets were not the actual times the place was open so I got there with only 15 minutes until the bar called last drinks! So I smashed my way through the museum (I.e. Looked at the pictures and didn't read anything) then made my way to the bar to try 2 of the 3 beers they had available. I hadn't had either of them before and one of them is only available at the museum bar. Beers are of course ordered via a vending machine (Insert money, get ticket, take to bar, get beer). Neither were particularly interesting. They were OK and easy drinking beers but nothing I would chase down.
The bar itself was pretty nice. While the Guinness one goes for the wow factor with the 360 degree glass observatory this one embraces the red brick building and is just a drinking hall. I enjoyed it and I imagine it would be quite fun on a busy day. Limit of 30 minutes at a table though! There's also some sort of VIP package but I have no idea what it offered other than a roped off section in the bar. All day drinking maybe?
There are also a bunch of restaurants around the museum. A couple of fine-ish dining ones and a couple of BBQ halls. A Sapporo specialty is apparently Mongolian BBQ. They even call it Jingiskan (Genghis Khan) or something and it's meat cooked at your table on a BBQ. Basically Korean BBQ as far as I can tell with a different shaped BBQ plate. I had intended to eat this delicacy here tonight but I just wasn't hungry so I didn't bother.
There was a shopping mall near the Sapporo factory so I went in there for a last ditch effort at getting thongs and ... Success! Kind of. At a sports store in there I managed to find something approximating thongs that I'm willing to have a go at. I'm not convinced I like them but I need something so I'm giving them a go. It was either those or a $40 pair of crocs and I do have some standards. So all 3 items checked off the list! Julian - if you're reading this you may be bringing me a pair of thongs to Danmark.
Ended up getting Sapporo's special Miso Ramen on the way back to the hostel so I think I hit the interesting Sapporo foods.
And that was my Sapporo tourism done. A nice enough city that essentially lives in the underground shopping malls during winter. It'd be nice to come back here during winter one day to go skiing and see the difference.
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