Merry Christmas (weekend)! To celebrate, my boyfriend and I are doing a longer overnight stay in Sapporo and eating good (food is always good, but more so than usual?). As usual, we made a rough meal plan and general itinerary for our trip, along with some more formal reservations.
Friday December 23: I’m still working until right up before Christmas, so like other times, I immediately left work after I got out and met up with my boyfriend on the way to the bus station. We got on the 4:40 bus, which was the soonest one, and headed off for Sapporo. I’ve been wanting to go to a shabu place for a while, and my family traditionally does hot pot for big holidays like Christmas, so we took the opporunity to get hot pot this day to start our festive weekend off. After doing a bit of research, I ended up deciding on a place, and to guarantee we’d get a spot when we arrived, I made a reservation for 7:45, just to also give us some wiggle room. It turned out to be just right, since there was some traffic on the way! My boyfriend made a TikTok here!
I did not really take any other pictures, as we kept ordering on the iPad and got started eating right away since we had a time limit (120 minutes total, 90 minutes to order). All of the food was good though, and there was a huge selection of things to order on the tablet. There were a variety of veggies, mochi, tofu, sauces, a la carte appetizers and small eats, and then each person was allowed one dessert at the end. I went for the matcha tiramisu, and my boyfriend for the berry sundae. I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself here though. We were able to choose 2 soup bases for the table, and we went with two of their standard ones: my boyfriend wanted a spicy soup, and since I was deciding between the Ox tail or the sukiyaki one, he picked out the beef one. We went with the beef shabu course, the second tier, because I wanted at least beef in my hot pot, and we were fine with the selection that it came with. I’m pretty satisfied with our choices, as the beef course came with pretty good beef already (I’m sure the higher courses are even better, but this was good already!). I will say I think I either ate too quickly because of the time limit or I was just way too eager to eat, but I think I did overstuff myself a bit. My stomach wasn’t hurting to that degree, but I did probably go over a comfortable limit, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to treat yourself a tad, and also take advantage of an all you can eat place, right?
And then we headed back to our Airbnb for the night!
December 24: Happy Christmas Eve! This was going to be our only full day in Sapporo this weekend, and we had a full itinerary for the day mostly planned. We had a Genghis Khan reservation at 11, but we didn’t want barbeque to be our first meal of the day, so I searched up some cafes to go to beforehand. Most places around Sapporo usually open around 10-11, so finding one earlier takes a bit of looking, but we settled on Cafe Yoshimi, which was actually quite close to our lunch spot. We arrived around 9:15, and the cafe was fairly empty and quiet, which was nice.
We mostly picked it out because my boyfriend was interested in their current Strawberry winter seasonal items. Their regular morning menu is quite limited and basic otherwise, and out of the options I was only interested in their ice cream options. Being an adult means you can choose to have ice cream for breakfast, ha! I actually originally wanted the Mitarashi Dango Sundae, but they don’t do that anymore apparently, so I just went with the Japanese Style one instead. Everything about it was pretty good, and the drizzle of brown sugar syrup on top was a nice touch too. The drink was just a fancy strawberry milk, and the roll cake was a nice, roll cake. The mochi was realy good though!
After breakfast, we relaxed a bit in the cafe, as we had about an hour to kill before lunch. We had to hand around the area anyway, since our lunch place was almost next door, so we ended up just taking a brief walk around the area. Around this time, the underground street vendors for the day were just finishing setting up, so we window shopped a bit, and bought a few items too.
I’m a sucker for mochi and ichigo daifuku, so when I saw the daifuku stand I had to stop by, and get something. After browsing, I noticed the Chestnut Daifuku. I’m not personally too much of a nut person, but my boyfriend thought it’d be interesting to try, so we ended up getting it. Another booth nearby was set up for the Tourism Organization for Yoichi, a couple towns away from where I live actually. I’ve been meaning to take a Yoichi trip sometime, because I hear they are famous for their apples (I love me some apple products!) and my boyfriend is a whiskey fan, and Yoichi is home to the Nikka distillery. Their products looked really interesting, and the alcholic chocolates they were selling were calling my boyfriend. We also bought some fresh wood-ear mushroom fish cakes and I purchased the apple cupcake with white bean paste filling, along with the chocolates. We still had some time to kill, so we wentered a drugstore called Ainz and Tulpe that had always intrigued me, and windowshopped a bit. My boyfriend ended up getting some hand warmers, and then it was time for our reservation.
Although we did go to a local genghis khan place in my small town a bit ago, my boyfriend wanted to experience eating genghis khan, a Hokkaido specialty, in the big city, so our planned lunch for the day was genghis khan. We narrowed our choice down to the Matsuo chain for the day, because they pre-mariante their meat (which doesn’t seem to be too common here other than big yakiniku chains?), though eventually we might hit up other big spots. We opted to go for lunch as opposed to an all you can eat dinner because the lunch deal looked pretty good. We weren’t sure if these kind of places tend to get packed easily, so I went ahead and made a reservation for 11am, early and right when they open to guarantee a spot.
They did have an all you can eat option, but neither of us were feeling that at 11am, so we went with the same lunch set, which comes with a free soft drink, miso soup, veggies, a plate of 150 grams of marinated lamb, and unlimited rice refills at lunch. Overall it was pretty good, and good amount of lunch. The sauce felt a little gingery for my taste, but everything tasted pretty good. The meat was soft and tender, and kind of has the texture of beef not not quite the flavor, but was still really good. We also ended up getting an order of udon to simmer in the sauce as well. The sausage was free, because I found a coupon online for it!
After lunch was our main part of the day, just doing some more shopping, and my boyfriend had a goal in mind. Since Saturday was going to be our only full day in Sapporo, we used the time to head back to the nerdy merchandise stores (Animate, Book-Off, etc). He picked up a few things in this area for himself and his friends.
After a brief break from food, I wanted to check out this chocolate/coffee place that looked really interesting to me, and I heard they had good hot chocolate. When we were done with the Animate area, we went to Saturday’s, which also has a small booth under Stellar Place, for some hot chocolate/midday snack, and it’s also somewhat close to where we were already anyway.
The interior was really cute and cozy, with there just being enough seats without being crowded, and the vibes were immaculate. Perhaps someday I will purchase the somewhat expensive chocolate form here, but the labels and flavors were very intriguing. My boyfriend didn’t want a drink for himself and said he’d have some of mine, and I was deciding between a iced or hot chocolate (why iced? I was pretty sweaty from the time spent in the Animate building at the time), and the chocolate ice cream also looked really good! He preferred a hot, so I just went with the basic hot chococlate. The cup was a bit smaller than I would have liked, but the drink was really good. It came out just a bit hotter than the right temperature, so we let it sit for a bit before drinking and it was perfect. It wasn’t too sweet, just a tad bitter to really taste the chocolate, and the consistency was great too. I will someday go back to try their other goods…
After our hot chocolate stop, we headed to Mandarake for part two of our nerdy shopping. We spent a good chunk of time at Mandarake and Sugaraya upstairs, and may or may not have made a few purchases…
Though my boyfriend’s mostly been the one to choose where we eat recently because I haven’t been craving anything in particular and he has a sort of Japanese food bucket list, I suggested getting gyoza because I’ve been in a low-key gyoza mood for a while. After giving him three places I have bookmarked, we chose to go to Kirin Gyoza, a small hole-in-the-wall Chinese place, because my boyfriend liked the other menu options they had there better, and they were close by to Mandarake. They also only open at 5, which fit in perfectly in our Saturday dinner slot. We got there a little bit before they opened to get an early seat since Tabelog said there’s only 11, and we also had an early lunch anyway. There was already a line forming!
Unfortunately, when they opened and they started letting people in, once we got to the front of the line they asked if we had a reservation. I said no, because asking if you do is pretty common around here, but then the guy said we can’t enter without a reservation because it’s full otherwise. What the! I didn’t see this information anywhere, on Google, or on Tabelog. None of the usual reservation sites also work for the place, so I assumed they were a hole-in-the-wall that doesn’t do that and does first-come-first-serve. I guess in the future I should just call them? It was a big sad and loss for me that day, as I was really looking forward to the plump dumplings and other Chinese food, and we usually aren’t in Sapporo for the night either.
As our alternative, my boyfriend instead suggested soup curry or ramen, and out of the two I preferred ramen more because I’m not much of a curry person. It wasn’t too much further, because we just went back to the Mandarake building where the Ichiran is. Plus, for some reason Tonkotsu broth isn’t much of a thing here, and Ichiran is probably one of the few places among the endless ramen shops that has tonkotsu broth. I wasn’t super hungry, and I didn’t really want any add-ons, so I went with the basic.
It’s the classic Ichiran setup that I’ve been to before, with the private booth and everything. We were able to be seated relatively quickly, and alreayd filled out or order sheet too. The picture looks plain, because I didn’t get any spicy sauce or green onions, and it only comes with two small pieces of chashu. The ramen was good, had that nice change of pace with the tonkotsu broth, with the thin noodles that I like in it too, and the chashu wasn’t super fatty, which I’m a fan of. Honestly though, for the price and what it comes with, you can probably find a better deal elsewhere, because of the lack of stuff there is in the ramen bowl. I guess you’re paying for brand name and customizability, but otherwise I was kind of eh about it. Plus, if I had known we were getting some more food (post boba plans) I probably wouldn’t have gotten ramen. Oh well.
After ramen, it was only around 6/6:30, and we used the evening time to go see the Odori Park lights, since the Odori ones end on December 25, and other lights if they were along the way. First we dropped off all the stuff we bought at a rental locker, and started at 1 Chome, aka the first block in front of the TV Tower, and looked at the illuminations in the area. I also saw a real Yakiimo truck for the first time, ha!
The main Odori Park lights were super pretty! I think my favorite is between Blocks 3 and 4, the blossom and the emerald one. The only ones I’m missing from the pictures above are the Sapporo Station South Exit Station Square Venue (in front of Stellar Place) and the Kita 3-jo Plaza in from of Akarenga Plaza. The former is because I’ve actually passed by that quite a few times now and those lights are pretty, but just ok? The latter is because that will still be there until March, and we weren’t really in the area that day. Really though, other than the main Odori park ones, the other ones are cool, but a little underwhelming and generic.
Our last planned spot for the day was to get boba (duh!) from Shin An Ju. I’ve been meaning to try them out for a while, but they were always a little our of the way from the station, and you have to pay for no ice here…On the way, we stopped by a Mega Don Quixote, because my boyfriend has never been in one and I wanted to show him one. He also felt snacky and started craving the super long fries we had the last time at the German Christmas market, but didn’t want to have to navigate the crowd at the market, so we were hoping one of the food trucks on the way would have the long fries. Unfortunately, the truck I saw a couple months ago was no longer there, but we did get some soy sauce butter flavored Shaka Shaka fries (pour some seasoning powder in a bag of fries and shake) from another truck on the way to boba.
We did let the fries sit for a bit after getting them before eating them with our boba, but they were like standard McDonalds fries with some butter flavoring. I tasted more butter than soy sauce, but maybe that flavor is more muted. You can read about my boba, here!
We were both actually feeling snacky, and my boyfriend kept joking about gettina Famichiki from Family Mart. Originally, he was thinking about going to an Izakaya in the evening, but we were both kind of getting tired and needed to lug the stuff back to the Airbnbanyway, so we thought about getting takeout from somewhere. Since it seemed like he was in a fried chicken mood, I was looking up some karaage places around. Then I thought of another gyoza place I wanted to try that also does karaage, so we headed there, which was just straight down Tanukikoji. Ironically, this was the one place among the three gyoza places I showed my boyfriend that he didn’t exactly prefer at first because their menu wasn’t super varied. Once we got there, we both each ended up getting an order of their large gyoza.
We took it to go, so we only ate it once we picked up our stuff from the locker and made our way back to the Airbnb. It was lukewarm by then, but we couldn’t get the microwave at the Airbnb to plug in, so we just ended up with lukewarm gyoza. Oh well. Other than that, it was really good! I liked how it was super plump, and there was so much juice that leaked from inside. The meat wasn’t mushy like a lot of generic gyoza is, and there were bigger pieces of cabbage in there too.
December 25: My boyfriend was very insistent about getting KFC for Christmas because it’s a Japanese thing, so right after we checked out of our Airbnb we went to pick up our special Christmas KFC pre-order (2980 yen) which we scheduled for 10am. Before that, as a breakfast and pre-fried chicken snack, we just shared the two daifuku we bought the day before. That way, we didn’t need to leave early to hit up a cafe for breakfast. They were pretty good, but also relatively standard daifukus. The chestnut one unsurprisingly tasted like a Mont Blanc dessert (which uses chestnuts), but we both still preferred the classic strawberry one.
Around 9:45, we left our Airbnb to go drop off all my boyfriend’s stuff at a locker before going to KFC. Our preorder was at 10, and the food court it’s in only opens at 10 anyway. We had to wait a bit in a small line that was forming before they opened the doors, but that was pretty cool to see when they did. There were staff members right at 10 that opened all the doors to wecome the massive lines that had formed by that time. I really wondered what all those people were lining up for, like what specifically were they aiming for? Surely they weren’t all going for KFC, as when we actually got in, KFC didn’t really have much of a line. The process to pick up was really quick though, just tell them your order number and name, and we ate our Christmas chicken at the tables in the food court.
We ended up preording Christmas Pack B, which included 4 chicken tenders, 2 barbeque chickens, and 10 nuggets. It was pretty good for an even split between us. Overall, it was an ok experience, and it really was just what came in the box (plus two packets of ketchup). I do think none of the items I got can be found in American KFC, so thats a plus, maybe? The tenders were pretty good, a bit crispy, and nicely seasoned, but a bit dry on the inside. The nuggets reminded me of the McDonalds texture (my boyfriend disagreed) but with a bit of a not too crispy exterior. The barbeque chicken was tender and a bit juicy, and covered with classic tasting barbeque sauce. It was a good amount of food, and also, for just chicken, really filling for a while. I wish the tenders and the nuggets were crispier/freshly fried, but from a fast food joint in the morning what can you do?
Post-KFC, we went to Kinokuniya because my boyfriend is on the lookout for a specific manga. We didn’t end up finding it, and will come back to try again, but he did end up buying a couple things. After that, we stopped by Travelex so he could exchange some more cash, and then, to complete more of his collection he started the day before, we went back to Mandarake after he had a night to think about what else he wanted to buy.
Originally, we were going to have an early dinner before getting on the bsus home, but we didn’t really have much else we wanted to do in the area that day, so we decided to just get my boba, and then the soonest bus home. My spot for the day was The Tea, which was on our way back, and I could get free no ice! You can read about it here!
We quickly bought our drinks and made our way back to the station to buy a Christmas cake, as is another tradition. The bus stop and the locker are both close to Esta, so we bought the smallest Christmas Strawberry Shortcake we could find from one of the Esta food vendors.
I wanted to have some time to check out a discounted bus ticket promotion that’s happening, but the next bus was at 1:45, and we barely made that one. On the one hand, we were able to get home earlier, but on the other, no potential bus savings…I know there’s a digital version on the app, but i kind of don’t want to use that method, so it’s whatever I guess.
We got home, dropped out stuff off, got groceries, and finally ate. My boyfriend and I split some discounted supermarket sushi with kimchi before the cake. The cake was small but perfect! It was a fluffy white classic Japanese strawberry shortcake, the whipped cream was light and fluffy, and the strawberries on top were perfectly crispy and ripe.
Japan Excursions 
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