Happy birthday to the emperor! Febraruary 23rd was a holiday for the aforementioned reason, so I decided to go out to Sapporo for various reasons.
Taking my normal bus in the morning, my first stop after arriving was heading to the Starbucks at Parco to grab the newest seasonal frappucino and also to do some merchandise hunting for my boyfriend’s friend. Although it’s far from sakura season in Hokkaido, Starbucks (along with some other usual brands I follow) unleased their sakura goods on February 15th. It is a bit early, though some parts of Japan do start to get cherry blossoms already, so I supposed it’s never too early to start. I was excited to try this year’s frappucino, but frankly, when I first saw the goods lineup, I wasn’t impressed. I’m much more of a fan of the pastel lineup from last year (which is why I caved and bought a tumbler), but this year’s is much more pop and bright pink, even adding accents of bright blue and neon green. Starbucks isn’t taking my money this year, for better or for worse.
I will say though, when I got to Starbucks in person, some of the items did seem a bit appealing, like the glass cups. However, as with Japanese items, they were a bit small and didn’t seem too practical, so I figured I didn’t need them. I grabbed a frapp, and later on in the day at a different starbucks (I visited a total of 5 Starbucks I believe looking for merchandise?), I bought the sakura chiffon cake (455 yen) and the chocolate rice flour muffin (295 yen) to take home. The frapp is supposed to invoke hanami (cherry blossom viewing) season, with chewy 3 colored dango on top and in the drink, a sakura fragrance, soy milk, bean sauce, cherry blossom strawberry sauce, whipped cream, and a sakura fiantine topping. The chiffon cake is supposed to have a chewy and pliable texture, made with sakura petal powder, and topped with a petal pickled with salt. The muffin is actually part of the plant-based series, made from almond milk and rice flour topped with chocolatee chunks to create a chewy, moist, chocolate muffin.
For the frapp, I found the initial flavor quite interesting. It did have a subtle fruity taste, but also simultaneously a flowery taste was quite apparent. I’m assuming the fiantine topping is the pink white chocolate shavings on top, which did make the drink look pretty. For the main star, the dango, they were very boba reminiscent, being chewy balls sucked up a straw and all, and actually had a bit of mochi texture. They were less chewy than typical boba, and were more chew through-able, on the softer side. As a boba addict girl, I enjoyed the added texture.
As for the foods, I microwaved the muffin at home, and it was pretty moist and not too dense. A lot of chocolate flavor, and you wouldn’t be able to tell there was anything different than a normal muffin. The cake was fluffy and airy, with a bit of a light flowery taste to it. The whipped cream was a lot like another cake I think I had from them, kind of stiff, but still airy in texture and flavor. I didn’t eat the petal that came on top.
When I entered the Parco building, I noticed that the current pop-up store on the 7th floor was actually a Kirby shop. As a Kirby fan and the sister of a Kirby addict, I went up to check it out and scope out the goods for my sister.
A little after 11, I headed for the Animate, specifically because there were supposed to be some Kirby item releases for mid-February and I wanted to see if the Animate had them. They did have one, but I did not expect the huge line exclusive for Nijisanji merchandise taking up half the tiny shop. Animate always has a long line, but this was a bit crazy.
After doing some Kirby middleman purchasing errands, I headed over for my lunch spot of the day: Yahei, a tempura shop that I’ve been meaning to try for a bit. There was a bit of a line (shocker), but I was committed, and it wasn’t too long, so in the meantime I decided on what I wanted: the eel tempura lunch set. Each lunch set comes with rice, a free rice refill (extra points), clam miso soup, pickles, and a dessert. My tempura assortment consisted of an eel, one shrimp, a shishito pepper, a chicken and shisho wrap, eggplant, maitake mushroom, and I believe everyone gets an egg tempura, which is a service unique to Yahei.With the egg, it’s soft boiled on the inside, so they recommend you put it on your rice, add some tempura don sauce, and eat it as a runny egg-on-rice situation.
I’m normally a plain rice girl, but since there was a free refill, I decided to try their recommendation on my first bowl of rice. Once I broke the egg, golden yellow-orange goo oozed out and covered my rice, and I added some sauce. I’m sure there are huge fans of this phenomenon, but I thought it was just ok and didn’t really add to my experience. The sauce was really good though. I’m generally not a huge shishito or eggplant person, but the eggplant was juicy and soft on the inside, and I enjoyed the light crunch on all the tempura I had. The eel was definitely a winner, with the crunch of the batter on the outside and the tender meat on the inside. The dessert everyone had was coffee jelly, which was actually my first time having it since I’m not huge on coffee. It was alright, and the cream on it definitely helped.
I made my way to Daimaru, since the next couple of places I wanted to go were there. Along the way, I passed a kitchen goods store in Stellar Place, selling some seasonal kitchen items, and my god were the sakura stuff tempting. The plates themselves were a litle small though, like meant for side dishes small.
Daimaru’s current pop-up at the moment is this Snoopy Journey with Friends Festival, with a bunch of limited items and goods themed around Sapporo. I’m not a die-hard Snoopy person, but since it’s here and a Sapporo exclusive, I figured I’d might as well go see it. There were general Snoopy goods, Snoopy Journey with friends exclusive goods, Sapporo exclusive goods, Otaru’s Snoopy Chaya goods, Hawaii’s Snoopy’s Surfshop goods, and this modern art exhibit by Tom Everhart (which didn’t allow pictures). Another line awaited me as I (unfortunately? fortunately?) found some Snoopy playing cards I wanted to purchase.
Now that it was definitely past 2pm, I headed downstairs to Afternoon Tea to finally try their afternoon tea set that’s only available past 2pm. This was the second half of their strawberry campaign, and for their afternoon tea sets, you get to choose 3 items and a drink, and this one also comes with a mini strawberry canele. I chose to get the strawberry and black tea crumble muffin exclusive to the set, strawberry and lychee jelly exclusive to the set, and the strawberry and black tea parfait exclusive to the season. I actually was going to give up the parfait for the strawberry scone beccause I had already had the full parfait (I really liked that one though), but the employee told me they replaced it with an orange earl grey one, so I got the parfait instead. For my drin, I got the strawberry darjeeling second flush blend. According to the description, it’s supposed to have a mild astringency to it, a refreshing taste, and a strawberry fragrance.
Starting with the parfait since it had ice cream that could melt, it was indeed a mini version of the larger one I tried. It had whipped cream, strawberry gelato, freeze dried strawberries on an earl grey whipped cream, strawberry jam on the bottom, earl grey crumble, and a pretzel on top. I thouroughly enjoyed all the flavors, and liked the combination of strawberry and tea flavors. The jelly was really light and refreshing, and was topped with whipped cream and a sprig of mint on a bed of graham cracker crumbs. The freshstrawberries in it were a nice contrast to the jammed ones in the parfait. The canele was cute, really chewy, and just a sweet pastry. Muffins seem to be not too common in Japan, and I liked this one: slightly dense, but moist, with a bit of strawberry flavor.
With some time left until the bust I wanted to catch, I visited the nearest GU because I heard they came out with their pull-on pants in pink. The color was more muted in person than it looked in pictures, and I decided I wasn’t a huge fan, so I saved some money on a pair of pants.
I wanted to buy a slice of the new LeTao double cheesecake flavor (strawberry!), but they weren’t selling slices yet, only the large cakes, so I suppose that would have to wait until next time.
Finally, as one of the main events of the day, I stopped by a McDonalds on the way to the bus stop. Starting 2/23 (that day), McDonalds would be releasing a new line of Happy Meal toys: 3 waves of Kirby, and a PomPomPurin collection. For the first week there wold be 4 Kirbys, the next week would be another 4, and the third week would be all 8. Around 4:30, I approached the McDonalds, but when I went to order, there was a Sold Out sticker on the Kirby Happy Meal on the menu. The cashier said even though it was the first day of the campaign, they were already sold out by then, and had the audacity to try to sell me a PomPomPurin one. I said I was good, bought some things to-go since I was there, and proceeded defeated, since I didn’t have time to visit another McDonalds before my bus. I later bought the Kirbys secondhand on Mercari (Japanese eBay) at my sister’s request.
As always, my last stop before heading home is boba, this time, from Gong Cha. Read about my boba here!
I got on the bus at 5 to go home!
Japan Excursions 
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