Today was our first, and only, full day in Sapporo, and because we’ve been getting up super early, nothing is open. For those of you not familiar with Japan, everything opens around 10am, and therefore closes around 8pm – 10pm. Because we were up at 6am, nothing was open.
However, it was snowing, which was terribly exciting. Coming from hot and humid Tokyo, to see snow falling, white outside, with crows flying around, was either really serene, or the start of a terrible horror movie. It seemed serene to me.
We decided to take a 30 minute train ride up the coast towards Otaru. Otaru is a seaside town, famous for nothing in particular, except a canal. This canal has been done in “European style”, and therefore, is a tourist attraction. Wanting to kill a couple of hours, we decided to catch the train to Otaru to see the canal. Otaru also happens to be near one of Japan’s first Ski Fields, however, instead of that, we went and saw the canal.
The canal was … canal like. Imagine a river, made of sea water I presume. That describes the canal. Kathryn was underwhelmed, considering the train had taken about 50 minutes to get here. We left Otaru, never to return again.
We then caught the train back to Sapporo, and decided to see some of the central sites of Sapporo. One of the main tourist attractions is seeing the Sapporo Clock Tower. This was ranked the third most disappointing tourist attraction in Japan by Japanese tourists. I’d really hate to see what number one and two were, based on what we saw at the clock tower. It’s famous because it’s quite an old building in Sapporo. Kathryn thought it was an inside joke of the Japanese people. I think it’s a bit like the L&P bottle in Paeroa, it’s famous, but really only to New Zealanders.
We then went and saw the Sapporo Tower. This was modelled on the Tokyo Tower, which itself was modelled on the Eiffel Tower. The net result is a lot of towers that all look like each other. From here we made our way to a game arcade in one of the main shopping streets.
Game Arcades are a bit like Timezones in New Zealand, except massive in size. There’s one game where you try and topple over a stack of candy by adding more candy next to it until the pile of candy topples over. I spent about $14 trying to win about $3 worth of candy, and ended up with about $1 worth of candy. So that was a sound investment.
From there, we were exhausted from walking everywhere, so we took a brief stop at the hotel to have a nap and recharge the batteries, before heading out to the Sapporo Beer Museum and Sapporo Bier Garten.
Turns out that yesterday was a Japanese holiday (who would have known!), and because the museum is normally closed on a Monday (which yesterday was), they decided to close the museum on a Tuesday (which is today) instead. So that was disappointing. I did try and call them up and they answered, which I assumed meant that they were open, but I was clearly wrong. Turns out my emergency Japanese doesn’t exactly cover actual conversations that need to convey meaning.
What was open was the Sapporo Bier Garten. Basically this was a giant beer hall that served unlimited beer and lamb for about $40 each. Based on those prices, we needed to eat two plates of lamb each, and about 3 drinks each before we made our money back.
The problem with New Zealand is that certain things are restricted, so when overseas, people tend to indulge in those things. Fireworks are banned pretty much all the time, so when overseas I tend to buy them, and behave inappropriately with them. Same thing with all your can drink alcohol. That’s not a done thing in New Zealand because of Alcohol and Health laws, so when overseas where you can do this, there’s a natural inclination to overindulge. Which is what we did.
However, to ensure we didn’t sully the good name of New Zealand, we made sure we chanted and proclaimed to all people we walked past that we were Australian, specifically from Cairns. Who knows what will happen when we actually meet an Australian couple from Cairns, we’ll then have to pretend we’re from Adelaide instead.
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❖ Equipment ❖
Panasonic Lumix GF7
Lumix G Vario 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 Lens
Sony FDR-X3000 Action Cam
Sony VCT-STG1 Shooting Grip
AloJapan.com