JAPAN
Japan 2023 Day 12 - Sapporo
Today’s plan was to head to the Yoichi Whisky Distillery. From where we were staying it was probably an hour and a half to two hour train ride all said with walking and transferring. The terminus of the train is a very short walk to the distillery in Yoichi and it’s a really pretty ride that goes along the Sea of Japan.
The distillery is this big compound with really cute architecture and it was extra pretty with all the fresh snow.
The tour is in Japanese but there’s an app you can download to listen to it in English so make sure to bring earbuds if you go that route. There’s some Wifi in the waiting room but it’s pretty slow so I didn’t get a chance to download both the app and the actual audio. Thankfully the guide carried a sign with the english on it during the tour.
This is the room where they have the distillation pots. I totally missed the presentation on this but the paper map they gave us had some insights.
The owner of the distillery moved to Scotland to study how to make whiskey and met his wife there. This was Rita’s house, now used for some admin work:
Pretty cool to see the contrast of Japanese and Scottish architecture alongside the industrial setting of a whiskey distillery operation! Not to mention the winter wonderland effect of the snow.
Our ticket included the tour then a 20 minute tasting. They have water, ice and sparkling water to mix the whisky with and recommendations on how to mix them together. I drank my first with a splash of cold flat water and an ice cube, the second as a highball and the third on the rocks. Whiskey isn’t really my thing but I do like a good highball!
The restaurant here is really funny, they have sheperd’s pie and spaghetti among other things. I think they have a mix of food from Scotland since the founder of the distillery married a scottish woman and they lived there together. I got myself another highball to eat with my pork roast omarice and we had cheesecake and ice cream for dessert.
At the museum they go into more depth about how the founder learned how to distill whiskey and how the whiskey ended up getting so famous. You can also do another tasting here if you wish. We kinda breezed through the museum because we needed to catch our train.
En route back to our hotel to get some rest after day drinking, we stopped at the mall in Sapporo Station. We got some cream puffs from Beard Papa – delicious but unfortunately named. I thought it was cool they give you your puffs in a bag with a little ice pack in it. We also did a little shopping at Uniqlo and Loft.
Of course they have Uniqlo in the US but we heard that this one sells Sapporo and Hokkaido specific tshirts which they do. Those weren’t cute enough to buy but the store was ENORMOUS so we managed to still find something.
Loft on the other hand is not the clothing store Ann Taylor Loft from the US. It’s more like a general store with a big stationary section. We went specifically to look at that and I ended up walking away with a bunch of cute stickers and I had to tear myself away from the pens section. It was boiling hot in there with our big coats so we had to get out fast. I was ready to take a short rest of in our hotel to prepare for dinner.
For dinner we went to Sumire Ramen in Susukino which is a shop that came highly recommended from Justin’s Japanese friend and the internet. The wait literally took an hour and fifteen minutes!! It was pretty damn cold outside which stunk but a bunch of us got back into Slay the Spire on this trip so I got a couple failed runs in there haha.
When we finally got upstairs we ordered on the machine (thankfully it has an English menu) – the miso ramen with chashu is what they’re known for – and waited for a waitress to take our ticket. It’s a great system because you wait for a table and then once you sit it’s moments until the food shows up.
The ramen here is very hearty with great springy noodles. It’s pretty salty so make sure you’re punctuating the meal with sips of water.