We should have brought our jackets
We knew it would be cooler. The forecast said it would be cooler. It's further north and therefore would be cooler. We failed to put our jackets on this morning at 6.15 when we left, because it was already boiling in Tokyo.
We got off the flight and began to shiver in the cloudy, breezy, 23 degree climate. Hokkaido is completely different - it is flatter for larger sections of countryside and Sapporo, its main city, has the feel of a small, westernised city. The area we are staying in, I could easily compare to areas of Essen in Germany - you know, built up, wide streets, fairly nice but not shiny in the way bigger, expensive cities are, not empty but not busy and a hint of an industrialised past.
Sapporo isn't an industrial city in the same sense though - it is largely known for its fishing ports and trading ports and of course, its beer. We'll be visiting the brewery at some point in the next two days, along with the Herring Mansion (yes, that's a thing!).
After depositing our stuff, we went to a clothing department store to find a jumper for each of us. Annoying that we didn't bring our jackets, but I managed to spend as little as possible and we both like our jumpers enough to keep them. [Horribly aware the idea is to leave clothes behind]
We found a restaurant that was open early enough for us to eat, before the crowds but also before we starved - we hadn't eaten since breakfast at the airport, nearly 10 hours earlier! Two of the local dishes are seafood donburi (donburi being meat ontop of rice) and a curry soup thing. We had salmon sashimi and roe donburi which was really nice. I'm not a fan of curried things unless I can choose which spices and how hot etc, so I'll leave that one to Hubbo.
Our hostel is hipster enough to be comfortable and modern feeling but with a hint of pretention about its concrete pillars, bare lightbulbs and stripped concrete surface on the first floor. It'll do. The bed is the softest and most comfortable bed we've had all month so I will NOT mind sleeping on that.
We mostly wandered around and got a feel of the place - it's heavily Westernised, but there was some sort of local festival happening down a side street. There are rumours of a Ramen Street. There is a clock tower, but it's not the thing I photographed with a giant digital clock on, oh no, that's the t.v. tower or something. Pretty at night, either way.
No comments:
Post a Comment