Hokkaido - Day 2
Sapporo Beer Museum is a must-visit. It's one of the Hokkaido Heritage sites and is an amazing architecture in itself. Unfortunately the guided tour is only available in Japanese, or we would have learned so much about the history of beer in Japan. Although we don't speak the language we still enjoyed the exhibits and the beer tasting a lot.
We had a light lunch at the Garden Grill restaurant in the connected Sapporo Beer Garden, but it didn't stop us from having a second one at the Genghis Khan Hall immediately afterwards — the mutton BBQ was simply irresistible! If we ever go there again, we'd try the all-you-can-eat dinner!
With a full stomach, we walked to the Sapporo Factory, which isn't really a factory but a large shopping and entertainment complex constructed on the former site of Japan's first beer brewery. Other than the huge pet shop, we didn't find any interesting shops (or we weren't in the mood for shopping) so we just chilled out in the atrium for a while.
On our way back, we passed by the Sapporo Station and breezed through the Paseo food court on the B1 level. The number of food stalls, the variety and the beauty of the food was mind-blowing. Too bad we were still full from the double-lunch and only managed to eat a Taiyaki.
The food coma was kicking in so we returned to the hotel to take a nap before heading out for an authentic Sapporo miso ramen at the famous Ramen Yokocho, the ramen alley in Susukino. Each shop there was very small and we picked 味一番おぢぢ. The ramen was good but we honestly couldn't tell the difference from those we had in HK. To top it off, we stuffed a few donuts from the nearby Mister Donut and headed back happily.
