The rain actually stopped according to the forecast and I got ready to go out. The Odori park is quite a bit away, behind the station from here. I went through the station to see what they had to offer. And I stumbled over this gem:
A french style bakery. Look at those sourdough loafs...
They had a goof looking Quiche in the counter and I wanted to order it. And Japanese customer survice struck yet again. There were 3 girls working behind the corner. Each had her own checkout terminal and took her time to advise the customers. The girl taking my order told me for example. that they have a special offer fro the Quiche where I get a coffee and a sampling of their bread for 100 Yen more than the Quiche alone. Took it, tried their sourdough and white breads while the Quiche was warmed up and it was great. They still know that bread needs salt and not some nameless E123 chemicals to activate the proteins. Great texture and great taste.
The quiche. The fries were a bit strange going with it but they were in fact the best I had this time in Japan yet. They were so unbelievably crispy with an intensive potato taste... Awesome.
As I learned later, it was a mistake to have lunch.
The southern station plaza.
And the front of the building.
Impressions of Sapporo
More impressions. This time with a giant crab.
An old and probably very historic building of which I have not the slightest idea what it might have been. Addendum: It is the famous clock tower of Sapporo, famous because it is the oldest of its kind not yet razed by fire, earthquakes or tsunamis. For the same reason the oldest and most famous Japanese castles are from the 15th century. All older ones were destroyed one or the other way.
I finally managed to reach Odori park and to my left there was the old TV/Radio tower, but I really didn't want to hump... errr go up yet another tower. Odori park is a bit special, since it is not really a park at all. It was originally made as a fire break, when all the houses were still made of wood and parts the northern and southern part of old Sapporo. It is around 100 m in width (maybe a bit less) and has traffic lanes running on the northern and southern edge. For that it is around 1.5 km long and divided by perpendicular streets into 11 rectangular parts. Look it up on a map if you don't understand the description. I know, it is not very clear.
Anyways, each of the parts is built and adorned in a very different way. All in all the used 96 different species of trees and have seasonal flowerbeds.
The TV Tower and a classic cab in the foreground. One of those with white overlays on the seats.
Some of the flower beds in segment 3.
And the fountain. Behind it in the direction of segment number 4 there were some tents. Looked like something was up there. And oh boy it was.
As I learned now it is the time of the Sapporo autumn festival. I knew of the snow festival, where they do ice sculptures and stuff, but had never heard of the autumn festival. It occupied the sections 4-10 and each section had another theme. All of them were either food or desserts or booze. All in all it was 300(!) stalls stretched over more than 1 km. There was nothing else, no games, no carousels, only food and drink. I saw a lot of kids and also young couples. The tradition lives on!
It was made up like a market of street stalls and it smelled heavenly. And poor little old me was full to the brim with breakfast and Quiche. It was torture. Cruel, painful, unadulterated torture.
In one section they had sizzling seafood, clams and oysters expertly grilled, the next section had specialties of little towns in cities all over Hokkaido. And so on and so forth. I'll let pictures speak. Oh btw... There will be some faces, but it was essentially impossible to not have them on the pics since it was pretty full for a weekday. Sue me.
Seafood.
Cocktails. They usually have a single brand of hard booze and then a dozen or so different mixes.
Some of the stalls were color coded. But I don't know if it has a deeper meaning.
One of the street crossings between the sections. There is a funny thing with Japanese traffic lights for pedestrians. When it is green they have a certain loud bird voice, so also blind people know when it is reasonable safe to walk. At one traffic light it didn't work obviously, so there was a real policeman with and hand device, playing the sound when it is green and then a different sound when it is short before changing to red (green blinks and the automated bird voice also changes). A nice touch.
Different section, different look and feel.
When there is no festival, the park also has some nice memorials, like this obelisk.
In the Ramen section they had extensive english descriptions of the different kinds on offer. I only took a pic of this one, there were about 2 dozen different. Unbelievable smell of slow cooked broth in that section.
And the seasonal flowers.
This section had the deliberate feeling of a clearing in a deep forest. The smell of the trees, the cool shadow and the sunlight dapples were really nice.
Giant clams with corail (!) for a measly 5,40 €. My heart still bleeds.
"Schau essen" (look eat), German Bratwurst, the first take,
This photo is for the monument. Ignore the stalls.
The hard booze section. They had a plethora of locally made spirits.
The Hokkaido local section. Each stall was representing a small city or town in Hokkaido and had a map with the location on their banner. Depending on the location they had very different stuff: Seaside had seafood of course, but inland locations hat venison, beef, pork, mutton, dairy products, melon and so on.
While I took a break on a bench this (pretty old) crow was.. crowing. It sounded like it was complaining about all those people in his living room.
On the right side you see one of the garbage collection spots they had on each entry and exit of every segment. When you had a lot (like a full tray or so) the friendly people there helped to sort it into the garbage bins.
And the stand on the left for completeness. Yes, it is Pizza (with local Hokkaido cheese), and the things looked wonderful.
I forgot to take images IN the section (was too occupied with drooling and cursing the fate to be full to the brim), but at least one after leaving. That was the meat section. All beef, most of it Wagyu.
I managed to nail the moment where it was empty. Other than that it was not crowded but well populated. The GERMAN GRILL MEISTER. I know there are some good bratwurst producers in Japan, but one of the best in unfortunately near my home in Germany. And why would I eat Bratwurst in Japan. which I can have equal or better at home when they have so many thing you can't find in Germany at all?
The "Precious Table" was the last section and it was as posh as the name sounds. Local wine, champagne and top Sapporo chefs.
After that there was a bit of untouched park with the old magistrate building.
I took another break there and had a nice encounter with a Dachshund puppy. She was very lively and the owner (who spoke very good English) was totally flustered and asked me 3 times if I was really OK with dogs (seems to be unusual in Japan?) and I told her yeah, got one myself at home. All the while the little lady loved to play and be cuddled. Dunno, maybe my boots still have the smell of my dog? Unfortunately I thought too late of asking for a pic and they were gone.
I wandered all the way back to the tower. Stumbled over this:
A memorial of the Olympic winter games 1972
Back in Section 3 where I started, a boy band complete with groupies was doing... something.
They were not even half bad. The music they had was very low volume and they had to do their dance moves, so they hardly had the mic there where it belongs most of the time..
For good measure: More seasonal flowers.
And the obligatory wide angle dramatic tower shot.
All that took much longer than I thought and I scrapped visiting the shopping street and underground shopping center. Maybe tomorrow, but tomorrow's main attraction will be another mountain with another cable car. A much higher mountain, and it needs two cable cars to get up to the observation platform. For tomorrow sunny weather is forecast. So hopefully the view is clear after today's rain.
For dinner I perused the Izakaya directly in the hotel here. It didn't look much from the outside, bit I was lucky still getting a seat. Seems to be very popular.
The obligatory side dish. No idea what it is, but was tasty.
Grilled ray fin, crispy.
I need my liver. Chicken liver skewers.
I originally ordered I kind of mussles I had never seen before cooked in Sake. But they were sold out 😞. So I took the tried and true Karaage. It was good.
See how juice that chicken meat is?
Butter fried potato cakes. Essentially potato dumplings pressed flat and fried. With extra butter. Of course they were awesome!
Pacific blue fin tuna Sashimi with freshly grated radish. Man... in spite of being so lean it was full of flavor.
Oh yeah. On my way back from the festival to the hotel I stopped at a Lawson's and they had my fav beer (the Rich Malts by Suntory) in the special autumn edition. Is that an awesome can or is it an awesome can?
That's it for today. Tomorrow I also need to reserve my seats for Friday's trip to Hachinohe.
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