JAPAN
Japan 2023 Day 13 - Sapporo
Today we had breakfast at a really cool spot called Sapporo Pancake & Parfait Last Mint. The vibes were amazing and it was very quiet and empty there when we arrived. We ordered the apple caramel pancakes and the mixed berry with cream and they were both amazing!
While they weren’t fluffy pancakes like on our first day, the texture and flavor was still really good and I didn’t feel sick from too much sugar either.
We then headed over on the subway to Maruyama Park. Seems like it’s best known during cherry blossom season but in February it was a total winter wonderland. Tons of fresh powder and lovely contrast between the trees and the snow. Also, there was a little tubing hill with free tubes to use!
I wanted to do the hike up the mountain first because I thought we might lose steam throughout the afternoon and I wanted to knock out the hardest thing first. I’m glad I did because it was quite hard to do with how much snow Sapporo has. Here’s the park map you can see the trail on the bottom half. We had come in from the subway station on the right hand side.
At the base of the trail are these really cool shrines:
Torii gate with kitsune statues:
The way up was super steep and slippery but the view at the top is so worth it. I believe the trail markers indicated it was something like 0.7 kilometers which is roughly half a mile.
While we were at the summit a little long tailed tit flew RIGHT toward us and landed on a nearby branch. It wasn’t pure white but it was still pretty cool since we’d seen so many stickers and other souvenirs for the so called “snow fairies” of Hokkaido.
On our way back we paused on the trail since we heard so much chirping and did some amateur ornithology and caught a pure white snow fairy on camera! As well as some of his more plain buddies.
Shoes soaked but feeling accomplished we made our way back down carefully and popped over to the shrine of the park to pay our respects and take some photos. This was pretty similar to our experience visiting the shrine in Tokyo.
There’s a little café nearby the temple where you can get coffee, tea, ice cream or mochi where we went to get some baked mochi waffle. We ate that and warmed up a bit before heading back to the subway to try to make dinner in the city.
Since we had failed to get into Daruma two nights before we specifically planned today to get there 30 minutes before it opened to wait.
We had a small amount of time to kill first to meet up with everyone and warm up so we got some tea at Doutor Coffee nearby the main Daruma location. The hojicha latte I got was incredible and had just the zip and warmth I needed after our day.
Even getting in line early didn’t help us at Daruma though. It took at least an hour and a half of standing in the cold and freezing our toes off to get inside. The website I linked above describes the interior pretty well – there’s probably only 7 or 10 seats in total.
As for the food well, was it an hour and a half wait better than Haramiya?
I think the meat quality was a bit better and the drinks were better at Daruma. But the space is cramped and the wait is pretty insane. So you might be better off getting the lamb BBQ elsewhere.
We wanted to hang with our friend a little longer so we walked back into the subway station. By the way, each “district” of the subway mall seems to have its own name. I just googled Pole Town Sapporo and found it has its own article. I think we were craving sweets and wanted to browse their selection.
We ended up with cheese tarts from Kinotoya Bake. The crust was flakey and the cream was cheesy but I think the subtlety of th sweetness made this tart a little too eggy and not enough tart-y.
Also while we were down there I impulse bought some clothes from Muji. I just needed some new gloves since mine have holes in three fingers on each hand heh. Of course I bought a shirt on sale and a nice sweater too. It makes me feel better to learn they don’t have Muji anywhere near San Francisco so I couldn’t have just gotten this at home!