Day 5: Morning train to Sapporo. Spent the day at Sapporo. Overnight at Sapporo.

We reschedule our morning to catch the 9:42AM rather than the 8:02AM train to Sapporo. This allowed us to sleep in a tiny bit longer. For those who plan to travel from Kutchan to Sapporo, please note that there are express trains available, saving you about 15 minutes, when compared to the normal schedules. The journey should take you about 2 hours. Always check hyperdia.com for train schedules.

We stay in Sheraton Sapporo Hotel which was situated next to the Shin-Sapporo (JR) station. Please note that the Shin-Sapporo (Subway) is at the same location, but a different area, which requires 5 minutes between them. And please note that the JR and Subway are different companies, each requiring their own tickets and fares.

We checked in, got ourselves an upgrade from Twin sharing to a King sized bed. We had booked a Twin sharing as it was cheaper!! Since it was almost 1PM, we decided to head down to the city centre to have lunch.

We headed down to Sapporo (JR) station, where it is the main hub for the Sapporo city. Situated directly next to the station is the JR Tower, which consist of a few shopping centre like Daimaru, Sapporo Esta and Stellar Place.

By recommendation (read here), we decided to try the top Ramen that Hokkaido has to offer at the 10th Floor of Sapporo Esta. Within this tiny area, you may find a selection of top Ramen restaurants from all over Hokkaido. Some started from road side stalls, while others had generations and generations of history behind them. Unfortunatly we can only one, have decided to try Shirakaba Sansou which is situated on the first left restaurant when you first enter the area. Read more on our Shirakaba Sansou Ramen here.

After our heavy lunch, we decided to walk around Sapporo Esta. We travelled down the escalator, to find video arcades games, pet stores and other shops before entering Bic Camera departmental store. As we were walking down, we visited the Toy section first.

Eelin asked me... "What do you want to?"... my reply.... "EVERYTHING!"

Like a kid in a toy store, I was absolutely fascinated with everything available, from electronic toys, to Gundam models, to very detailed train replicas... I had a look around, and found some LEGO, only to realised that, it cost more than what I would pay for in Malaysia. We then proceeded to locate Nanoblocks (see pict above), which are very much like LEGO but comes in very tiny pieces... with the smallest block being only 4x4mm in size. Since its a Japanese brand, we were hoping to purchase some. Not only did we find some, but since they had 20% discount, we purchase quite a few.

We walked around Bic Camera departmental store. We loved their Console section, with the pre-launch booking for the Nintendo 3DS being only at ¥25,000 we realised that some things could be cheaper in Japan! We visited other sections like their Electrical section to view their TVs and other electrical goods. We also visited the ladies and men's department to realised that most of the clothing are for the Winter season. 

In most shopping centres in Japan, the lower ground floors would be filled with food. Whether it is bento boxes, or cakes, the whole entire floor would be ..... droool....filled with  food.... I bought my first Taiyaki (click here to read my Taiyaki post) while Eelin enjoyed her Strawberry Mochi. Yummzz... we love to walk through the food section looking for new stuff to try....

What's exploring a new country if you don't explore their food and culture?

We decided to head outdoors before it was too dark to do anything. We started off by heading to the Old Hokkaido Government Building, or better known as Red Bricks to the locals.The walk was only a few blocks from the Sapporo JR.

The Old Government building now hosts a souvenir shop while the other rooms are used to display the history of Sapporo. It is not a very touristy place to visit. Don't expect much, but sort of a history museum of Sapporo city.

We moved on, and visited Odori park, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Sapporo Snow Festival schedule to start on the 7th Feb 2011. Unfortunately since its almost 3 weeks away, nothing was prepared yet. We however found some giant snow blocks carved with some cute famous character like Hello Kitty and Snoopy. Each block is about 6 feet high, so its quite huge.

Odori park consist of a park that spans 12 blocks... very very long.... As we were exploring it, I came across this huge gigantic snow/ice sculpture that they wanted to build.... no idea what the finished product would be like, but they were really trying to collect and build a very big snow/ice sculpture. About 3 storey high and still going...

On one of the corner you would be able to see the Sapporo TV Tower as pictured here. 

 

After all these walking in the blistering Winter, we need to hunt for more local food... next on our list... Ramen... again? we headed to the Ramen Alley situated not too far from Odori park. In this tiny alley, there are 17 Ramen shops. As you may have noticed, one of them is the exact same one as the one we had for lunch!! Not knowing which was best, we decided to walk past every stall, looking for one that was packed with locals... sure enough we found one that was.... however after waiting about 10 minutes in the cold, we decided to settle for 2nd best. We tried one that had some customers but wasn't the most packed. I am sorry but we wont be posting any pictures of what we had for dinner as both our cameras was too fogged up to capture any photos.