On the weekend of January 20th, I stayed the weekend in Sapporo, mostly because my boyfriend suggested it in case we had a long bus ride again, and to make our limited time in Sapporo worth it. I just wanted to go out that weekend to hang out after not going out after two weeks. The next time I go out will probably be for the Snow Festival in 3 weeks, unless some other event comes up in the meantime.
January 20th:
We left at our usual time to get on the 7:40 bus, and stopped by a local Seicomart for some snacks before getting on the bus. Arriving around 10:30, we had about an hour to kill before our lunch reservation at 11:30. I was getting hungry (I did not get snacks, just had a bite of my boyfriend’s onigiri), and decided to start off the day by heading to Starbucks and trying the new frappucino that came out the week before. With February coming up, it’s no surprise chocolate things are starting to come out. My boyfriend got the seasonal Gianduja Chocolate mocha. I really thought the strawberry lavender tea latte wasn’t there anymore, but it seemed like it was, and I got to try that…
The drink is supposed to be a collaboration with Godiva, and mimic the taste of an opera cake, which I think is an almond flour based chocolate dessert. The drink itself is almond milk blended with dark chocolate powder, and chocolate chips, topped with whipped cream, chocolate glacage sauce, and some gold powder. Personally, I’m not an almond person, but I don’t really taste it in macarons, and I felt if I subbed the milk with normal milk it would defeat the purpose of the drink, so I just stuck with the default. They advertised the drink as a bit bitter, but personally, I felt like it was just right chocolate-wise. Not too sweet, and the actual blended part just tasted like a dark-chocolately smoothie. The chocolate sauce on top was very rich, but if you mixed it in it worked fine. Most of it ended up getting stuck on the edge of the cup as I drank the drink anyway.
As we made our way down to the Susukino area, we made an impromptu stop by the new Cocono Susukino mall that opened on November 30th. I did stop by the outside a bit ago, but decided not to go in because I figured there’d be crowds as they just open, and some of the shops wouldn’t even be open yet (there’s a “second” opening happening sometime end of January or something?). No point in getting to the restaurant early though, so we explored what Cocono currently has to offer. What is there currently is pretty cool, including a supermarket, some small food booths that look exciting, a bar floor (that had a lot of people already at 11am!), and a new theater. There was a CBD goods store, which I still ffind questionable…
We were both craving yakiniku, and since dinner can get kind of expensive and lunch sets are much more affordable and light, I chose to go to Yakiniku Dining Megumi, mostly because a bit ago I saw them advertising their lunch set outside and it looked like a pretty good deal. I made a reservation just in case, but there was no one when we went at 11:30. I got the lunch set 2, which consists of a drink (I got oolong tea), rice (I got large), soup (wakame soup), kimchi, 2 slices of Sendai A5 Wagyu shortrib, 2 slices of skirt steak, 2 slices of beef tongue, and a choice of offal or liver (I went with the offal). My boyfriend got the Set 3 which was all lamb meat, and we ordered a cold noodle to share. A cool thing is that you can order on a tablet with different language functions!
Overall, I liked the meal! Kimchi was pretty good, soup was nice, and all the meat was pretty good quality. Dare I say the Sendai A5 meat was super marbled, and almost too fatty? The skirt steak cooked well, very meaty, but still tender, and the tongue pieces this time were thin enough tto be cooked quickly while still easily chewable (they shrank quite a bit though). This was my first time trying offal, and I think the trick is to let it get crispy, otherwise it becomes way too chewy and not swallowable, but otherwise, not a bad first experience. It was a pretty good set with good meat and good sides, though I could have done with more meat, but that was to be expected.
We headed to the Animate/Book-Off building to see what new items were in season, and to my surprise, on the top floor where the Animate event space floor is, the current event was a pop-up for anthropomorphized towers across Japan. Of course, Hokkaido/Sapporo has the Sapporo TV Tower, so that was represented by this guy in blue. Japan doesn’t cease to surprise me with anime people at this point.
Since we were in the area, we stopped by Shin An Ju for some midday boba. I opted for the Tapioca Mango Juice, and my boyfriend got the Taro Milk. Read about my boba here!
We checked in to our hostel, which opened check in at 3. After dropping off our stuff, we headed to the Norpresa building spontaneously, because we saw it on our way to the hostel, and both thought that we hadn’t been in this building for a while for Mandarake and the other merch stores. There was definitely some money spent…
Our dinner plan was to try out this local small gyoza shop I’ve had in my bookmarks since my boyfriend was craving gyoza. Nowadays when I look for gyoza in Japan, I’m looking for something more unique or looks more similar to Chinese dumplings, because generally, gyoza tends to be the same everywhere…we headed to the restaurant around 5 because that’s when they were supposed to open.
It’sa really cute small shop run by (what I presume to be) an elderly couple. They’re both super friendly, and even though we were American and speaking English (though I spoke to them in Japanese), the man really tried to communicate with us in whatever English he knew, and offered us an English menu. What’s a bit odd is that they offer teishokus, but only in limited quantities, to the point that when we arrived, he said there was only 2 left. We initially considered, but were mainly there for gyoza, so we just ordered single items. First we started with an 8pc (comes in 6, 8, 10, 20) normal gyoza, and I wanted to try their boiled one. My boyfriend also eventually ordered the cheese one out of curiousity. For condiments, they had vinegar, soy sauce, and a homemade ginger spicy oil and a homemade garlic spicy oil.
The gyoza were really good! They were the perfect degree of crispiness, while also still having plump skin and with super juicy filling. The inside was a mix of cabbage and meat, and it was very delicious and satisfying! I was a bit more disappointed with the boiled gyoza, which came with a ponzu dipping sauce, and were more flat with a bit less filling. To my surprise, the filling itself was actually different, with all meat, and a lot more gingery tasting. The cheese gyoza was really a wild card, as the gyoza itself was the same, but instead, was on top of a bed of cheese pre “sliced” and topped with some basil. It was like a wannabe gyoza pizza. Interesting experience, but I think the cheese takes away from the experience. Apparently, they really researched what cheese would go best with gyoza, which was an interesting read.
Then we went karaoke for 2.5 hours. Fun! It was, well, karaoke, but at least much more affordable than when I went back home. Yikes.
Then it came for my boyfriend’s most anticipated part of the day: getting ramen at Ichi. Their limited ramen of the day was this spicy Taiwanese ramen, and though normally I’d probably go for the limited item, I’m not about that spicy life. It made for a good opportunity to get their standard chuka soba.
It was really good! The broth was fishy, but still light and sort of refreshing, and I loved the slightly thick and chewy noodles that they use for the signature chuka. It only came with one piece of chashu, but it was actually pretty thick, meaty and satisfying. Not like some stingy places that give only one super thin slice. Thanks to the boyfriend for treating me! 🙂 I really wanted to go to an evening parfait place (since it’s not everyday I’m staying overnight in Sapporo), but my boyfriend wasn’t feeling too well, so we ended up not going…
On our way back to the hostel, I made a quick stop by Shigepan, the evening bakery. We both got their chocolate chip melon pan, called “Earth”.
I did have this one before, except last time I ate it right away in the cold, and this time I saved it for the next day and heated it up in the microwave. It definitely gave a different texture, as this time the chocolate was a lot more melty (obviously), and the bread was much softer instead of being fluffy. Still good!
January 21st:
Check-out from our hostel was at 10, and since it would be a bit early for lunch (I guess brunch is a thing), we decided to go to Afternoon Tea to get breakfast from their current Strawberry Days campaign. There were somethings that were only available through January, and some things that are only available in February. Guess we have to go back next month!
I was aiming for the current parfait, and my boyfriend was thinking of the Afternoon Tea set availble in January. The February one is the same, in that you can pick 3 items and you get a tea and a strawberry canele, except the starwberry sandwich and the strawberry mousse and jasmine jelly are exclusive to January, with another two items limited to February. Unfortunately, what the website didn’t tell me, was this Afternoon Tea Set is only available from 2pm onwards, which I suppose is accurate to its name. He ended up getting the Strawberry and Ricotta Cheesecake, and we got the Strawberry and Jasmine Jelly Tea to share. The parfait by itself would be 1300 yen, but goes up to 1500 in a drink set, and adds an additional 240 with one of the limited time drinks. The drink originally is 980 yen, but in a drink set with the parfait, it becomes a bit cheaper.
The English name for the drink sounds a lot more fancy than the Japanese one, but it’s basically Jasmine tea with jasmine jelly and a strawberry jam sauce. Unfortunately for me, the last time I had a similar drink was that sparkling apple tea, but this one wasn’t sparkling, and actually worked really nicely with the refreshing jasmine and strawberry pairing. A pleasant surprise!
The parfait also contains the strawberry confiture, elderflower and apple jelly, earl grey whipped cream, housemade black tea crumble, and two types of ice cream. Specifically when I got it, it had a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a scoop of strawberry gelato, along with some frozen strawberries and blueberries, and topped with actual pretzel sticks! I find pretzels this style to be actually pretty rare in Japan (the Japanese pretezel tends to be either Pretz or the actual German bread), so I really liked that addition, along with somehow the rare blueberry sighting, even though frozen. Everything was really good, but I think my favorite part was the tea crumble.
The shortcake is supposed to be made up of ricotta and honey whipped cream and strawberry whipped cream, topped with strawberries. I had a bite, and it was really light and fluffy and airy (don’t those words all mean the same thing?).
I stopped by Fuwa Mochi Tei in the same area to grab some of their bagels to take home, this time opting for an earl grey white chocolate and a whole wheat. Unfortunately because the total was less than 500, I couldn’t get any stamps on my stamp card. Boo.
We headed in the direction of Sapporo Station, and made a quick Jupiter and Kaldi stop so my boyfriend could browse the impport goods section. Then he needed some money, so we went to the Travelex to exchange some cash.
For lunch, we went to Matsunoya, a really affordable katsu chain (the parent company is actually the gyudon chain Matsuya). I got the katsu loin and oyster fry teishoku with large rice (any rice size was the same price), and my boyfriend got the vegetable mille feuille katsu with European style beef curry. They had a digital payment terminal, but for some reason it didn’t work so I used cash…
The katsu was pretty good quality. For a loin cut, it wasn’t super fatty with a good amount of meat, and the batter and outside edges were super crispy and nicely fried. There were a ton of sauces to choose from, and even the rice was really good.
My boyfriend wanted to grab some McDonald’s to bring home (I found something I wanted, but not at the moment, so it better still be there in a month), and originally I wanted to also grab a slice of the new LeTao cheesecake flavor, but seeing as we didn’t have too much time until the next bus and usually the new flavor lasts two months, I’m determined to get it the next time I go.
Obviously before the bus ride, as usual I have to get boba…so the placeo the day was The Tea. Read about my boba here! Then we took the bus at 1 home.
This time, we stayed in The Stay, a hostel in western Susukino. We were only looking for a place to spend the night, nothing too fancy just for an overnight stay, so a hostel this time around worked for our needs. What’s good about traveling as two people is that even though we were at a hostel, we were able to book a private room instead of staying in a domitory. It was pretty cozy and actually a spacious room. There were also pretty big lounges for the shared space.
One downside is that while the other hostels in my experience have provided a towel or required indoor slippers, this one had a fee for both. Though it was 100 yen each for these (and some other amenities). I did read this ahead of time on the website, but the other hostels I stayed at had the same policy but still gave me a towel.
Japan Excursions 
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