November 3-5 was another three day weekend here in Japan, as November 3rd is Culture Day, and this time around, I figured I would take advantage of the longer weekend to stay in Sapporo. I thought about it early enough that I booked accomodation in Sapporo in advance, so I wouldn’t end up with an Otaru situation back in September. No real plans this time around, except for eating good food and getting a change of pace from my day-to-day life. At first when making my plans, I thought about visiting an Ainu museum since I would have the time, but then after looking up where the main one is and how far away it is from central Sapporo, I decided not to put in the effort and stick to the usual area where I can casually walk around.
November 3rd: As usual with the bus I take, I arrived around 10:20, which is too early to head for any lunch spots, but a bit late for a bigger breakfast situation. Actually, I was looking up some cafes to go hang out at an possibly grab a small snack or pastry, but then I realized that the new Starbucks frappucino is already out, and very festive already at that: the Strawberry Merry Cream Frappucino. With no caffeine in it, it’s made up of a marscapone cream infused white chocolate style whipped cream, strawberry sauce, merry cream (whatever that is, maybe the whipped cream?), and sparkly silver sugar powder on top. Weirdly enough, for this frapp, I couldn’t change the milk type, which was fine, but odd, since I’ve done it before…
I liked it a lot! The base was creamy, tasted like a normal milky base with some occasional strawberry syrup/jam mixed in, making the occasional strawberry sip a little tart and not too sweet. I think the whipped cream is the star here, as it’s the most uniquely flavored component, and the marscapone flavor is strong.
Most lunch-esque places around here tend to open around 11/11:30, and it happened my planned place of the day was on the 11:30 side. With some time to spare, I popped into the Animate, which was in the area, seeing if there was any new merchandise, of which, unfortunately for my wallet, there was…
Back to scheduled programming, when 11:30 was coming around, I headed to Dalsegno II, a pizza place that’s been in my bookmarks for a while. Before my trip with my family in July (wow, time flies!), I had been craving pizza, of which there is no shortage of Italian places in Sapporo. There’s quite a few I have in mind, but I went to Dalsegno because it’s one of the few places that has calamari on its menu. Plus, apparently they won a margherita pizza competition? They also have signs everywhere of this “Vera Pizza Napoleana” which certifies them as part of this association promoting real Neopolitan pizza. That’s cool. I got the pizza lunch set with their signature literal award-winning margherita because I’m a basic pizza gal, with an apple juice, and asked if I could order the calamari during lunch. The lady said it might take a while, which after checking with the chef, specifically would be 20 minutes, and I was totally fine with that.
The salad came out first, and it was…leaves with a vinagrette. The dressing was nice, but I’m not sure if I’d call it a salad if it was just leaves…Next the calamari came out, very fresh and light, with not a ton of batter. I think there’s pros and cons to it; you get the calamari experience but still get to enjoy it squid forward, but as a personal preference, I really like it when something that’s supposed to be crispy is crispy. The last thing that came out was the pizza, freshly baked in a woodfire oven and I couldn’t even hold it at first because it was so hot. The basil on it was a little lacking, but overall the pizza itself was yum. A nice even layer of tomato sauce and mozzarella, and the crust had a nice balance of chewy and crispy.
To get it out of the way, I think the lunch set itself is pretty well worth. You get a drink of preference and a flavored leaves in addition to a pizza (or pasta) of your choice for 1650 yen. I enjoyed the calamari, and the size does work as an appetizer, but that amount should not be 1760 yen…I suppose as I’ll deal with it as a one-time thing, but if you want fried squid, a 500 or so squid karaage is probably the best bet around here.
After lunch, I wandered around Tanukikoji, did some window shopping, and briefly checked out the Gan Gan Oyster Festival that was happening over the weekend. It’s basically an oyster and other seafood and beer snacks mini festival happening at the edge of Tanukikoji, offering seafood bucket deals. The thing is, they don’t sell individual items, and the least expensive one was a 4900 yen bucket of seafood for two people. Plus, there was a line…
My main stop of the day was actually heading down to Nakajima Park and checking out the Baked Sweet Potato Terrace Festival happening until the 5th. Nakajima Park is a pretty large and major park in Sapporo and sometimes events are held here, but it’s on the southern end of the central area, and I’ve actually never been, either just missing out on sone of the events or never having a reason to make the trek down there.
Overall, I think it was cool, and the event was basically along with a couple booths selling sweet potato snacks, a few sweet potato farms selling baked sweet potatoes. That seemed like the main attraction, and people were lining up like crazy for just baked potatoes, and there was only a limited number selling on the hour too. I’m not crazy enough to wait in a line for a baked potato, and though the snacks seemed appealing, I figured I didn’t need to get anything. More importantly, the yukimushi, tiny aphids that land all over your body before the snow starts in Hokkaido, were really bad in the park. The fall leaves were really pretty though.
Since I was in the area, I figured I could stop by some places that I normally wouldn’t go out of my way to come down here for. First, was Hasu Food, what I heard was another non-Japanese Asian foods store, because hunting for more non-Japanese Asian ingredients is important to me, ha! Turns out, it’s more of a Vietnamese grocery store. It was cool, but not entirely what I was looking for.
I wandered into a fish supermarket, passed by a few groceries, found the Ichigen main store, and ended up at the Sandria store (the 24 hour sandwich shop famous in the area, and now has a vending machine in Sapporo station). I’ve heard their sandwiches are good, and they have a whole variety, but I had no idea what I’d do with one since I had other food plans, so I left without getting anything. The sweet matcha red bean sounded good though. Funny thing is, when I arrived, there wasn’t a line, but after I decided not to get anything, a decent line started forming.
I figured with the extra time, I could check out the Chrysanthemum Festival happening in the underground walkway, until I re-checked the information, and it actually ended that day. For some reason I thought it was the 3-5th, when it was actually the 1-3rd, ending at 1pm on the last day. Oh well. I actually caught a breif glimpse in the morning on my way to Starbucks, but I thought I could come back later. Oops.
After killing enough time, I was able to finally able to check into the hostel for the weekend at 4. I just chilled and settled down to put down my things, and then when 6 rolled around, I headed to my dinner spot: Tsukemen Ichi, the tsukemen specialty version of Ramen Ichi, which I’ve gone once before, and my boyfriend is hooked on. I don’t have Twitter/X, where they post their daily special, but the day before was a scallop broth, so I got excited…until I went and they changed it again. I still got it though, because it was the daily special and it sounded fine. I honestly forgot what the name was after the chef said what it was… after scouting a bit, it might be back fat konbu broth.
It was refreshing, the noodles were cold, chewy, bouncy, and just the perfect thickness. and they came resting in this very light, slightly oily broth with a slice of yuzu(?), a spring of who knows what, and a piece of nori. I actually liked the additional flavor the yuzu slice added, and the chashu was a nice balance of fat to meat and tenderness. The dipping sauce was a slightly acidic, light soy sauce-y broth with lots of onion pieces. As it looks though, it wasn’t super filling, which actually made it perfect for dessert…
So there’s quite a few evening parfait places around Susukino, and since I was staying for a couple nights, you bet I was taking advantage of being able to be here late and going to as many open-evening-only places as possible (including Tsukemen Ichi). One of these places is Rojiura Cafe, and I made a reservation at 6:30 to guarantee I could get a spot (apparently they really fill up so a reservation is highly recommended!). They serve food and drinks and even have a decent all you can drink deal, but I was just here for a parfait. Their standard ones are berry, coffee, and chocolate, but at the moment they had two seasonals: Hokkaido melon, and the one I went for, the crème brûlée and 3 types of berry. It comes with 3 berry sauce, whipped cream, framboise mousse, soft serve, crispy sugar pie bits, some chocolate beats, and crème brûlée and a raspberry and a strawberry on top. , rooibos tea palette cleanser
I really liked everything in it, and was pleasantly surprised by the mini chocolate beads that added a new occasional texture and flavor, along with the toasty creme brulee topping. What was really nice was that
I couldn’t go without boba, so as my last treat of the day, I went to my favorite boba place in the area, Shin An Ju, for some boba to take back and sip at the hostel. Read about my boba here!
November 4th: Sleeping in is nice, but it’s not everyday I’m in Sapporo from the beginning of the day, so I got up early to get some fresh seafood for breakfast from Nijo Market, a famous (and touristy) seafood market in Sapporo, which my hostel also happened to be next to. There’s a ton of stalls selling fresh seafood as well as souvenirs, and quite a few restaurants all selling seafood bowls and other seafood variations (for tourists, most of them take card which is nice!). Now, I do tell people that if you’re eating seafood, you really should head to a coastal town and get the freshest possible, and Sapporo is decently more inland than other places in Hokkaido. However, it is a seafood market after all, and I figured I might as well seeing as I was there…
I had my eye on Ohiso, which might be one of the more popular restaurants, as even when I went right before opening time at 7:30, there was already quite a crowd of people waiting and already got tickets. Ohiso gives out numbered tickets after taking the number of your party, and they’ll call out numbers as tables are available with the disclaimer that they have no idea how long the wait will be, but if you’re not there, they’ll instantly cancel your table. For a party of 1 that arrived at 7:30, I ended getting seated at 8. There was a point while I was still waiting that they paused giving out tickets, but when I finished they took off that sign.
Anyway, after casually strolling around the area checking out the nearby stalls, I was seated, and the neat thing is that you order on an iPad that offers Chinese, English, and Korean in addition to Japanese. A lot of the bowl combinations are set, but there is an option after selecting to add additional toppings if you would like. I found my ideal bowl of crab, scallop, and salmon so I needed nothing extra, and I changed the normal miso soup to crab soup for 380 yen.
The bowl itself was as normal size, and I mean small, as normal kaisen dons go, but the toppings I thought were generous. The salmon slices were plump and came with 4 thick slices, there were 3 full, thick, big scallops, and the crab wasn’t the normal delicate, light crab that usually sprinkle on, but actually meaty chunks, substantial crab (apologies, I do not know my crab species and meat textures off the top of my head). The crab soup was ok, just adding some crab flavor to the miso soup, and other than working with a tiny spikey crab leg to get the tiny bit of meat, might not be entirely worth it to any potential tourists. Unless you really like crab. The best part (well, the seafood was really good), was that the rice wasn’t sushi rice, but plain white rice! It wasn’t super hot too, which made it perfect to eat along with the seafood.
It was still early in the morning to do anything else, so after browsing the rest of Nijo Market, I headed to the 500m Museum, an art exhibition using the underground subway area from Aurora Town to the Bus Center. It’s a permanent area but I think the art pieces themselves rotate every so often. Because it’s in a public area, the art is available for viewing 24/7.
Overall I thought it was cool, the art pieces at the moment were pretty unique, and basically spans an entire walkway. It was actually over before I knew it, and an interesting way to kill time while walking the entire way.
Then I popped into this bakery called A ton cote Boulangerie Cafe and Brasserie, and everything looked so good, but oh my goodness the danishes looked so good, with all the variety of flavors, especially the shine muscat. I ultimately decided against getting any of those though, because I didn’t see myself eating them right away. I did get a chocolate chip melon pan for myself for 180 yen. It was cute, small and round. I ended up eating it as part of breakfast the next day, toasting it at the hostel, and the outside ended up slightly crunchy, warm, while still being soft with chocolate bits on the inside.
The weird thing is that the cashier offered a point card to the lady that came before me but didn’t ask me if I had one?
I was actually on my way to Sapporo Factory, a nearby mall that also occasionally has events. Like many other places, I’ve been meaning to check it out, but never really had a reason to and it’s also kind of out of the way by walking. This time around, I heard that from November to December they were installing a “jumbo” Christmas tree. Specificaly, a 15 meter Sakhalin fir from Hiroo Town. There also happened to be a Sumikkogurashi exhibition, which you can kind of see the line of in the pictures, but that had an entrance fee.
The tree itself was big sure, and I liked the festive pathway with the red carpet but the tree felt kind of bare. Maybe I’m used to big fat American trees, but this one could have used some more girth. I think there was also supposed to be a 5 minute illumination show every hour in the evening, but I figured I was ok on that.
While I was there, I took the time to do some casual exploring. There’s two main buildings, with a movie theater, restaurants, cafes, fast food, and shops of all kinds. I may have walked into a toy store and it stole a bunch of my money…Their music playlist was top tier though.
Around 11 I was feeling kind of hungry, not enough for a full meal, but I also wasn’t really craving anything that was close by in the area. I happened to be on the bottom floor near the nikuman store, and thought it was convenient, so I went with a miso pork bun to go.
It came out super hot out of the steamer, so I did have to wait a bit before I could actually eat it. The bun was super fluffy, and had the perfect bun to filling ratio. Speaking of, it had a very ground pork texture, with the occasional veg crunch, and it had a strong sweet and savory flavor.
I noticed this bakery across the street called Sweet Lady Jane, and apparently it specializes in American sweets! Man, the cakes and tarts here looked so good too, but I ended up getting a thick chocolate chip cookie and a small brownie, both American sweets that aren’t easily available arond here. Plus, the exterior is just my aesthetic…The cookie was good! It felt texturally pretty hard, but it was just a stiff cookie (I mean, can’t expect a fresh, soft gooey one that’s prepackaged), just the right amount of crumble, and definitely reminiscent of a more American chocolate chip cookie flavor. The brownie was great too. A bit of a hard crisp exterior, but with a slightly gooey inside.
Finished with my business in this area, I headed back to Tanukikoji to do some shopping (there was this cardigan I had been eyeing the day before…) and also to get some midday boba from Shin An Ju. I figured since I didn’t have a real lunch and I had other later food plans, I’d get my boba as a midday snack and sip some matcha as I roam around Sapporo. Plus I had a coupon! Read about my boba here!
I actually had a ton of time left in the day, so I decided to check off my agenda for the day after (good thing I did, so I wouldn’t have to lug all my stuff around!), and wander up north and head to Daimaru first. I ended up at the Pokemon store, I saw a guy getting a birthday gift, and my birthday is this month, so I gave it a shot. Turns out, if your birthday falls within the month (they need an ID), you get a special card thing, along with a sticker between two Pokemon of your choice, and a special code for the current game. The guy asked me if I play the game, to which I said no, and he didn’t let me take one even to give to a friend. Every other staff member who saw me with it told me Happy Birthday, ha!.
The main reason I was wandering up north was because I wanted to check out the Chinese grocery store again, and another non-Japanese Asian grocery store. They’re both a bit out of the way, so I wouldn’t usually go to them on a normal day out in Sapporo. The Chinese grocery store was mainly the same with a few new things and a few things I like out of stock. It also seems like my Chinese could really use some work because I I asked the guy working a question, and he didn’t understand me, but the lady paying at the time did.
Further up north is Rakuichi, which is more of a general Asian grocery store, with Chinese, Korean. Thai, Vietnamese, and Indonesian goods. There was definitely a bigger and more varied selection, but other than frozen goods (which isn’t exactly convenient for me to take home), there wasn’t much I actually wanted. What was funny to me was that I saw a sign above the store that labled it as part of Chinatown, except that Chinatown is only composed of Rakuichi, the Chinese restaurant above it, and a karaoke place.
On my way back to central Sapporo, I decided to pop by the Sanrio store, since the last time I was there it was actually closed for renovation. This turned out to be a bad idea, as there were a ton of Hello Kitty 50th anniversary goods on display for sale that was way too tempting. In particular, this one bag looked very nice…but I did not need to spend any more money, not did I have the hand space to take it home. Japan really needs to stop churning out cute things. Especially for adults.
I initially wanted to start my evening off at Gotsubo Oyster Bar, which actually has a few locations around Susukino, since another spot I would be visiting later wouldn’t open until 7. I arrived at the branch that I thought was popular, but then I realized the price of an oyster had increased from 150 to 200. To top it off, they required an order of at least 1 drink per person (a thing at some izakayas), and I did not entirely want a drink if I was only going to get a couple. I attempted to go to the main store in the event that a drink wasn’t necessary, but it turns out that location closed and moved elsewhere.
I gave up, and decided to visit Shigepan, a bakery in the area that’s unique in that they open from 4pm to late at night, instead of a normal bakery that opens in the morning, and all of their breads have funny names. Apparently, they also take suggestions from customers, and if it makes it onto the menu, they name it after the customer. I got the Earth (200 yen), which was essentially a chocolate chip melon pan, and a Night Butterfly (90 yen) in matcha, which was a mini croissant.
I ended up eating the melon pan right after I bought it, since I was hungry, but ate the croissant as part of breakfast the next morning, also using the hostel toaster. I actually really liked this melon pan too! It wasn’t super crusty, but the inside was so fluffy and airy, and the addition of not-too-sweet chocolate on top was perfect. As for the mini matcha croissant, after toasting, I liked the nice pastry crunch it had, and the inside was soft and had some kind of sweet flavor. As with most matcha baked sweets though, the matcha flavor was pretty muted.
The gyoza bar I had in mind opened at 7, so after chilling in the hostel, I headed over to Suruguya. It was a tiny bar, with 3 benches that could each fit 2, maybe 3 people if you squeezed. When I arrived, there were already 4 people there. Everyone ordered a beer, except me, ha! The menu is all variations of gyoza, except for the drink appetizer. I just got a normal gyoza.
I mainly wanted to come here because the gyoza looked less Japanese-style than most other places. At first I considered getting the boiled dumplings as well, but figured it might have been too much. I should have figured because it’s a small bar, but the dumplings were a lot smaller than I they looked in pictures. They were really good, freshly fried up and handmade with a chewy skin and juicy filling, just small. I suppose it works out because I had dessert plans anyway…
On the next edition of evening parfaits, I headed to Denki Sabo, a really cool retro-esque cozy vibes cafe. They might sometimes have a seasonal as evidenced by the Google pictures, but at the moment it was just ther normal menu. I went for the chocolate parfait.
It came out in this slim, but very tall glass, which was very aesthetic. It came with soft serve covered with cocoa powder, some small brownie chunks, some tiny crispy flakes, whipped cream, and a tiny cup of this amazing chocolate sauce on the side. The flakes were unique, and that sauce was so good…
November 5th: I actually had a few cafes that are actually open early in the morning in mind to get breakfast at, but I decided against it at the last minute because I felt I didn’t need to spend excess money at that point, and I should eat the bread that I actually bought instead of saving it. Plus, the hostel has a proper oven toaster, whereas I only have a fish grill at home…I had the chocolate melon pan from A ton cote and the mini matcha croissant from Shigepan (see above).
Checkout from the hostel was at 10, so once that came around I left and made my first stop of the day the Sapporo International Market happening at the Sapporo Community Plaza. Basically it’s an international flea market-style cultural exchange event bringing vendors selling goods from various countries. All the tables were labled with what country they were representing, and a couple had snacks, but it was mostly clothes or other miscellaneous goods. I will say I saw a lots of Japan flags…there were also a few board game tables, a couple areas for kids to hang out, and a non-alcoholic cocktail booth. There was also this “English Challenge” happening, presumably for local Japanese kids. I really liked this booth run by a lady selling bags made from kimono obis. They were really pretty, but not really my style, though I will say, the pricing was really reasonable. I wish she had an online site so I could browse other items not there.
I had some time before my planned lunch spot opens at 11:30, so I went to the Le Trois building to get some onigiri to take home from the Donguri onigiri branch. I ended up getting 4 for myself (ate 2 that evening and 2 later in the week): a salmon, a simmered beef tendon, an edamame kelp, and a grilled mackerel. I got some other than salmon to attempt to expand my onigiri repetoire.
I’ve had their salmon before, and I think there was a good amount of filling, and the fish wasn’t too salty. The beef tendon one I got out of curiousity, and turns out they stuck a piece of tendon onto every corner. I wish there was more actual meat though, and no green onion, but I knew what I was getting into with the green onion. As for the other two I ate later after microwaving, even though it was labeled edamame kelp, to my surprise, the yellow pieces I thought were corn were actually cheese…not a cheese fan, which is quite unfortunate. The mackerel one was nice, but it also turns out I am not a huge shiso fan either. My boyfriend requested 2 tuna mayo.
Lunchtime rolled around, and I went to Udon Chikara Cafestyle. I was actually thinking about a yakiniku place with a lunch deal, but I didn’t want all my stuff I was carrying to start smelling, so I opted for udon instead. A warm bowl of udon would be nice for the chily day, and this place has a really cheap menu. [EDIT: Unfortunately, this place has sinced closed December 2023.]
I was seated on the basement floor, and though these all sit 3 max per table, each table was a small and cozy private booth! Plus, there’s free wifi. I got the oyster udon, but left out green onion, because green onion sucks.
You can really tell that their noodles are handmade just by their look and texture. They’re somewhat flat and thick, and almost reminiscent of kishimen, the flat noodle style I had in Nagoya (there’s also a kishimen restaurant in Susukino). The soup was a really nice and comforting classic udon broth, and the perfect degree of concentratedness. You know how some udon broths can be too salty or not flavorful enough? There were 5 oysters included, which I thought was a pretty good amount, considering they could have just stuck 2 or 3 and called it a day. Overall, a great meal, and highly recommend. For tourists, one thing to note is that they take cash or QR code payment, but no card. I think Tabelog lied to me…
It was satisfying, but wasn’t super filling. which made it perfect to get some post-lunch dessert. I headed to the Nana’s Green Tea in Parco for a parfait, specifically one limited to this month, the Apple Pie Parfait. It came with vanilla ice cream, cinnamon topping, caramel flakes, apple chunks, crispy pie pieces, apple compote, and hojicha jelly. Yes, this is the third parfait in a row, but I’ve been walking a a lot, not overstuffing myself, and these are all limited in their own capacity. Plus, I needed to go to a Muji to refill my water (Japan hack!).
Overall, as someone who likes apple sweets, I liked the parfait. The cinnamon bits on top were a bit strong for me, but mixed in with the rich vanilla ice cream helped to mellow out the flavor. I appreciated all of the apple pieces, stewed and just right between soft and still holding their shape. The pie pieces were like pie cracker snacks. The hojicha jelly was a pleasant surprise!
My last stop of the day was of course, some boba to get for the bus ride home. I opted for The Tea, because I haven’t had it in a while, and because I wanted to buy some of their Taiwanese snack foods to go: their mian xian, which is available in the colder season, and their new stinky tofu, both not really found elsewhere in Sapporo.
Read about my boba here! As for the other two, I reheated the mian xian at home (it came hot ready to enjoy), and the stinky tofu was to-go only, which I panfried at home. The flavor of the mian xian was on point, a bit too peppery for my taste, but instead of the standard oyster and intestines, it only contained shredded carrots and sliced mushrooms aside from the noodles. I don’t mind these vegetables, but if the description is going to say “seafood soup”, I’d like some seafood in there, aside from the tiny shrimp, which I assume is used to flavor the soup. The stinky tofu was pretty good; it was decently stinky right out of the package (I don’t like it too stinky, so it was just right!), and the stink basically went away after frying it. It came with a sweet chili sauce (usually I think the sauce is sweeter and thicker?), and pickles, which were really refreshing and not too spicy despite containing some pepper seeds.
With nothing else to, I decided to go home early, and hopped on the bus at 2 to go home.
Japan Excursions 
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