Sapporo, Japan 30.04

We arrived at the station with 2 minutes to spare, before our train left for Sapporo. It was a long trip from Osaka to the very north of Japan. We changed trains 4 times to get there! Our last train was an overnight one that arrived at 6am the following morning. Artur was already taking photos of the sleeping carriages when he realised that we had been assigned a chair carriage! We were most disappointed, but we made ourselves comfortable by turning the seats in front of us around and making a sort of bed with a gap.

We had arranged to stay with a guy called Mike who we met through couchsurfing. The plan was to meet at his place at 9am, so we hung around the station from 6am when we arrived. We found his appartment without any problems, but we got the wrong appartment number, so we had to find a pay phone to call him. Mike turned out to be really nice and we chatted with him for about an hour before we headed out for some sightseeing.

Our first priority for sightseeing was the Sapporo Beer Museum! It was the oldest beer factory in Japan, built in 1878. We saw the process of the beer making, and some of the history of the beer. English captions were rare, and the only tours available were in Japanese, so we just wandered around and looked at the models of the factory and sniffed pieces of hops and barley.

There was a display of beer bottles and other paraphernalia related to the Sapporo beer, including a barbie doll/ken doll of the guy that invented the beer.
They also had some funny advirtising posters from the 1920s - 30s of geishas toasting each other with the Sapporo beer. The coolest thing to see there was the giant beer brewing container. It was 6.5m high and 10m wide!

Even better than that of course, was the beer tasting, oh yeah! For USD 2 you could sample a glass any one of their beers. We tried the original Sapporo beer which was nice and malty, and the Yebisu beer which tasted a bit like Leffe Brune. It was a black beer with a coffee aftertaste. We were supplied with some great beer snacks to go along with our beer :)


Mt Moiwa Cable Car
Next we headed for the ropeway up to Mount Moiwa. The cable car travelled 531m and elevated us 400m. It was so cold and windy up there! We even saw some snow! The views over Sapporo were worthwhile seeing, despite the clouds and the cold weather. I Sapporo is the biggest in Hokkaido island, and it was used for the Winter Olympics in 1972.


Winter Sports Museum
After seeing the views over Sapporo, we headed off to see the Winter Sports Museum. A lovely lady at the bus station decided to escort us there, as it was on her way. She was so sweet, she put us on the wrong bus at first, but eventually got us on the right one. She lived very close to the Museum, so she practically held our hands until we got to her house.

We climbed up the hill to the museum on our own, but unfortunately, Lonely Planet misguided us this time, and we arrived just after it closed. We were told in the book that it was open for another hour. We made the most of being up there though, as we got some great views of the huge ski jump used for the olympics.

Sapporo City
After making our way back to town, we found another foreign bookshop where we bought some more manga. Loren was thrilled and looking forward to reading the next segment.

We were supposed to catch up with Mike for dinner in the city, but he got caught up at work, so we found a noodle place on our own. We were starving, so we didin't find the best place, but the food was still ok. We got to try another Sapporo beer though, woohoo! This one was the classic Sapporo, made only from malt, so it was very caramelly.

After dinner we headed home, and met Mike who was just cooking his dinner. He opened a bottle of Bordeaux for us and cooked us some little delicacies while he was in the kitchen. We chatted for ages before retiring for the night. Staying with him was a good choice :)