Hokkaido - Day 1
After the extremely short trip to Tokyo back in June, we decided we had to visit Japan again very, very soon. Unfortunately we had to wait until mid-October to do this because the office renovation, the big move and a few client projects in between had kept us really busy in the last three months.
We found a Sapporo Package on CX Holidays website that fit the bill: neither of us has been to Hokkaido before, we can go to onsen in a nearby city like Otaru, and the flight schedule is flexible enough (departs every Wed/Thur/Sat/Sun). The only challenge would be the 9 am departing flight.
With a bit of luck, we made it on time and the 4.5-hour flight was very enjoyable. Compared to our experience on United Airlines for our SXSW trip earlier this year, flying on CX was like heaven.
Sapporo's New Chitose airport is as nice as HK airport — modern, efficient and has tons of shops and restaurants that could easily make you forget the time. The signs are every where and well thought out so we made it to the airport JR station effortlessly.
It took around 40 min to get to Sapporo station from airport by JR, and another 10 min to our hotel located near Nakajimakoen (中島公園) station by subway. This Best Western hotel is awesome — designed in an understated chic style, free Internet access, 24-hour convenient store downstairs, huge room with full amenities and a view of the Sapporo TV Tower and the Norbessa Ferris Wheel.
Understandably we were starving by the time we arrived so we went out to hunt some food immediately. It turned out our hotel was just two blocks away from Susukino, a red-light district with tons of restaurants. We picked one (魚活鮮とあぶり焼き 海へ) randomly and as expected, we were not disappointed (never been in Japan, really) and ate way more than we should!
After this very satisfying meal, we took a stroll on the famous shopping street Tanukikoji 狸小路 and got fascinated by the interesting stuff carried by many of those shops. Our last stop of the night was the huge entertainment complex Norbessa which houses the Ferris Wheel we could see from our hotel room.
There aren't many tall buildings in Sapporo so the view from the Ferris Wheel is actually quite impressive and definitely worth the 600 yen if you haven't seen it before. On our way out, we saw this huge arcade on the 5/F and picked Silent Hill (a zombie shooter) just for fun. It's 100 yen and we ended up playing for 20+ minutes and killing hundreds of zombies and busting up our fingers on both hands! Good exercise but it made us wonder why the same game in HK would only last for 5 min given our "skills"?
