Arrival in Sapporo

From Sapporo Station To My Lodging

I had been in Otaru, relaxing for a few days after a week and a half of more intense travel and exploration of prehistoric sites in northern Honshū and southern Hokkaidō. The weather in Otaru was dark and cool and wet, making for a nice atmosphere for some relaxing time.

I took a train from Otaru to Sapporo Station, only about 35 kilometers and a little over forty minutes on a local train. The weather changed the morning I went to Sapporo, and was bright and sunny most of my time there.

Sapporo Station is a large commercial complex, and the Sapporo Tower projecting from one end is the tallest building in Sapporo.

Through the Tunnels

Several subterranean shopping passages run beneath major streets. The passages are open around the clock, while the shops mostly operate 1000-2000. The passages are long enough that you can't really see from one end to the other. The far end is just a vanishing point.

Pole Town runs south for 1.5 kilometers under Sapporo-eki-mae Dori from Sapporo Station to the Susukino Station of the subway.

Under Odori Park it intersects the east-west Aurora Town, which runs about 1.3 kilometers under Odori Park.

The stores in these passages are nice. Clothing, shoes, specialty food, and so on. There are restaurants and coffee shops. Shopping malls in the U.S. seem like the decaying remains of a once-healthy economy, with many shops closed and the rest with little more than trinkets and junk. Here, the businesses were healthy, both in the subterranean passages and up on the streets.

I could walk south through Pole Town without having to cross any streets. This would be especially nice during the snowy Hokkaidō winter.

Escalators connect up to Tanukikoji, a covered street.

Tanukikoji is seven blocks long, 900 meters east to west. At most of the streets it intersects, the crossing itself is also covered. Sapporo-eki-mae Dori is an exception, it's a broad street with a center median.

Tanukikoji has been a shopping street since around 1870, when Sapporo was being rapidly developed at the beginning of the Meiji Era.

I needed to walk one long block along Tanukikoji then cross a street. The Susukino entertainment district is just to the south.

There's the small purple sign for the place where I stayed, Hotel Plus Hostel Sapporo.

You can get a bunk in a long shared room. It's what I have seen as the Japanese style of hostel, bunks in a shared room, but with curtains that make it fairly private.

You can also stop here for a short rest, a shower, use of the shared lounge with WiFi, or any combination. I saw a few suit-clad salarymen on their computers in the shared room in the evenings. Based on the times I assume they were staying overnight.

I paid just a little bit more for a private room. It was just a mattress, a narrow shelf, and a sink. But that's all I needed. Plus a humidifier, which I didn't need. Toilets and showers were at the end of the hall.

I had my own miniature hot water heater. Also note the electrical outlet over the sink. Japanese outlets are very slightly different from North American ones. But they're close enough that plugs designed for one country work fine in the other.

However, very few Japanese outlets are grounded. Your laptop power supply may need an adaptor. If you forget to bring one, the ubiquitous convenience stores should have something that solves your problem.

In the Evening

Tanukikoji remains brightly lit around the clock, but at street crossings you can notice that evening is falling.

A building had been demolished directly across the passage from where I was staying. Its replacement was not yet under construction, so the temporarily vacant space had been turned into an beer garden open something like 1600-2000 daily.

The beer garden closes around 2000, but shops, restaurants, and izakayas remain open.

The skylights down the center are dark, but otherwise it's hard to gauge the time.

At the Izakaya

The next corner north from Tanukikoji had a cluster of places for meals. The yellow triangular sign is on a ramen shop, the small place with a black-and-white sign to its right is an izakaya with tables one and two levels above the street, and the large place on the corner has a wide variety of seafood dishes.

I went to the Saburo izakaya on two evenings. It doesn't open until about 1700.

The first night they seated me at a table up on the third floor, under the sloping roof. Notice the padding on the rafter above the steep stairs. From there it's a cramped duck-walk or else just crawl to the table.

They take your drink order, and then return with that plus a snack.

Meanwhile, you have had time to look through the large menu.

Yes, of course the menus are entirely in Japanese. But there are some pictures, and being able to pronounce the hiragana and katakana scripts can be very helpful. If you ask for "CHICKEN AND ONION" in near-shouted English, that might work. But if you can point to ねぎま next to the picture of chicken and onion skewers and read it as negima, that definitely works and wins you points with the staff.

What was the snack? Minced tuna, I think.

Then, the skewers! Two pork, two negima or chicken and green onion, two leek.

Capsules

One block along Tanukikoji from where I stayed was a capsule shop. The store was full of capsule vending machines stacked two high and arranged to leave only narrow aisles through the interior. Plus, a few more were rolled out onto the walkway in front of the store during operating hours.

Just inside the door was a machine that accepted ¥500 coins and ¥1000, ¥5000, and ¥10000 notes and returned ¥100 coins.

Of course you could get small figurines of anime and video game characters. But those are rather mainstream. I enjoyed seeing the more esoteric ones.

One machine had Cat Hats. So kawaii! Six varieties, collect them all so your cat can cosplay as various other animals. I got one of these for a friend who has a pet-care business.

Or, perhaps a series of replica miniature duplex outlets that are actually small night lights. Plug in the included cordless plug and it lights up.

I liked the series of replica miniature industrial power switches. Push the button and it plays one of four train departure messages. "Please note that the door will close", and so on. Exactly what an electrical engineer needs!

I got one for myself, plus one for that friend of mine because he was an electrician in the Navy and, as I correctly guessed, he did not yet own a Japanese miniature replica industrial power switch.

One machine had a series of miniature replica ceiling light fixtures. Just what everyone needs!

Next❯ Odori Park