I'm going to squeeze the rest of our Sapporo trip into one post because I'm anxious to move on and blog about our following trip to Mt Fuji...
So, on day two we slept in and then made our way to the Sapporo Brewery. We spent most of the day there because there was so much to do...
Sapporo Brewery
First we went to the beer museum.
Museums can be challenging, since we can't read anything, but Chris was kind enough to be my tour guide:)
Our favorite part was the little displays about how beer was made. They looked like a children's cartoon!
It's a beautiful brewery. This is the tasting room.
Afterwards we went to one of the restaurants there at the brewery for the Ghengis Khan... Lamb and vegetable barbecue. It was delicious.
Outside the brewery there was a festival going on. There were drummers...
and dancers...
and lots of beer... We stayed for quite a while watching the various performances and eating some of the best soft serve ice cream ever.
Afterwards, we caught a bus back to town, spent some time in the Sapporo Factory (it's just a neat mall with a ton of cool shops, including a bunch of outdoor gear stores) and grabbed dinner.
We also found this great little observatory that was in the building next to our hotel.
They had a coffee shop/bar at the top and lots of comfy seats to sit and watch the sunset.
I had Chris take this picture (obviously).
The third day we were in Sapporo we got an all day bus/subway pass and really traveled all over.
First we went to the Olympic Jump Stadium from the 1972 Winter Olympics. The bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere and we had about a 10 minute walk to the stadium. There was this map near the bus stop... it would have been nice to have been able to read it!
In spite of the map, we didn't have any trouble finding the stadium.
We took a chair lift to the top.
There's a whole host of reasons why I'm not an olympic ski jumper, but I think this downhill view has to be pretty high on the list.
I'll have to stick to the ski jumping games that they had in the museum! I'm a pretty good virtual athlete!
They had a ton of olympic games to play - hockey, bobsledding, ice skating, speed skating, cross country skiing... we had quite a bit of fun.
Our next stop was the Historic Village of Hokkaido. They took a bunch of historic buildings from all over the island and placed them together in this historic town.
At the fishing village we got to try the traditional backpacks that they used to carry the fish. They were about as uncomfortable as you could get. I think I'll stick with my own backpack...
This photographer's studio was pretty cool. The second story room had tons of light from the glass roof, and there were black and white curtains that could be arranged to give just the right lighting for the portraits.
This is the martial arts gymnasium in one of the old schools.
Next, we went to the sake museum. It was pretty small and I only took the one picture inside, but we were able to taste a few different types of sake. I didn't think I liked sake, but after tasting a few from here I'm reevaluating that... they had some pretty good ones.
Sapporo's clock tower. Apparently, based on the announcements in the bus when we drove by, this is Sapporo's most famous site. The clock was made in Boston.
Ramen ally, downtown in the entertainment district. There are about 6 ramen restaurants crammed in this tiny ally. We chose one at random.
I love Japanese ramen. It's especially good in the wintertime. It's okay in the summer too, but it got pretty hot in this tiny restaurant with a hot bowl of ramen and no A/C.
The next day we got up early and caught the train back home. I love Sapporo. I can't wait to go back.
We didn't have any lunch packed up for the return trip home, so we had to buy a lunch from the food cart on the train. The beef lunch sounded better than the other lunches with candied herring, but it was still a little hard to handle, especially that long thing in the middle that looked like a tail... Lesson learned. Next time we'll pack sandwiches.
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