Sapporo Downtown

That night myself and Jeppe decided to explore the centre of the city.

The city was having a food festival, which meant choosing where to eat an easy decision to make and we could keep visiting the stalls until we'd had our fill. I think I had some random seafood and some lamb. The food was really good. I just felt sorry for the restaurants in the area whose trade must have been hit quite hard by this fortnight long event.

The festival was taking place in Odori park, a mile long, single-block wide strip of parks in the city. At the eastern end the city has a clone of the Tokyo Tower, this one featuring a restaurant along with the usual observation deck.

The city was quite lively at night, which made its exploration fun.

The Norbessa entertainment complex is home to some arcades, a bowling alley and on its roof a large big wheel. Jeppe spotted the wheel reflected in another building nearby so we headed towards it to check it out.

Inside the arcade. My favourite game was the cube looking one called Jubeat. It has a unique interface in a grid of 16 buttons that each contain a video screen.


The clip above shows how it works. You can play single player or online, which I tried and got my butt kicked at. As expected there were people playing who were very good at it.

Inside the nicely themed bowling alley. Funky!

A couple of movie posters for the cinema complex. I know which one I'd prefer to watch ;)

A shot of the tower blocks taken from the wheel.

A shot of the wheel from a tower block. Jeppe had spotted a car park across the road and we climbed out onto the roof to take this.

The entrance to Tanukikoji, an enclosed street that houses a number of restaurants, pachinko parlours and shops.

It's also the magnet for musicians testing their material. Some more successful than others.

Close by is the Sapporo clock tower, an American structure that is one of the more popular tourist attractions in the city. So popular in fact that we'd stumbled across it quite by accident. It wasn't on our must-do list at all! It was OK I suppose but looked out of place in amongst all the modern buildings, but then there aren't many buildings still around that were built in the early 20th century.

Sapporo Downtown again

Again we decided to spend the evening exploring Sapporo again but as we'd done most of the good places the night before we were retreading our steps again.

Dinner was spent at the food fair. This dessert was lush. It's kakigori or shaved ice with fruit sauce. A great healthy alternative to ice cream just totally impractical to make as the ice has to be at a stupid temperature and the shaving is done on some hand cranking machine.

Back for another walk down Tanukikoji

Not the Japanese equivalent of the Happy Eater food chain I suspect.

This restaurant does not look out of place at all.

The pachinko parlours were LOUD!! and as I never recreated the streak I got in Beppu I didn't really play them all that much.

Liking this poster. It was advertising a small animation exhibition of animated shorts that I would have liked to have seen, but it was closed this time of night.

Not something you'd see in London :)

and this would likely be covered up too!

Cute kiddy bugs!

Lovely looking seafood.

Not sure if this was intentional for Halloween or just coincidence but this looks cool!

Oh dear! A little bit of Ireland, or is it London, in Sapporo.

We spent the rest of the night at Norbessa playing the games again.
I'd managed to miss this billboard with some cool, and some not so cool, manga artwork at the back of the games floor.

Heh Heh!! She's actually a character in one of the coin shooting games.

A selection of drinks in the local 24 hour supermarket. Over the course of the holiday I think I'd made my way through all of these...except the Coca Cola of course!

One of the more neon-lit crossings in Sapporo.

Sapporo City Walk

Our final day in Sapporo was going to be quite a busy one with us checking out of the hotel, visiting the last park of the trip, flying back to Tokyo and then heading out to the other side of the city ready to fly home the next day. The original itinerary was less stressed but due to a last minute reworking after I'd realised we wouldn't have made our flight home (not a good place to be) I had to rework it. Some of the pressure was taken off by having done Matsuyama Zoo a few days earlier as this was also planned for today.

This is the hotel that we were staying in. The Grand Hotel. Definitely a good choice of hotel and the place I'd recommend to friends. It's a 5 minutes walk from the centre of town and the main station and it has a Starbucks downstairs to keep Jeppe happy :D

Before heading out to the park I chose to have a short walk around a public park again close to the hotel.

This is the Akarenga "Red Brick" building that used to be the Government Office before they relocated. Now, like the clock tower, it's a western style building that is a tourist attraction.

The grounds are nice though.

The first time I've come across a turtle in the wild.

This piece of art is inscribed with lots of peace messages from various dignitaries and world leaders.

With the morning jaunt over it was time to head over to the train station and a trip to the final park.

Now where have I seen this before?