Sapporo is a new city by japanese standards. It was rested in its current form in the late 1800’s, with the downtown city plan done by an aAmerican city planner at the invitation of the local government. So the city doesn’t have the much in the way of traditional Japan. It is a new city, very clean and well-maintained. In the center of town is Odori Park – which is a wonderful 10-block long park that is a city block wide. At the east end of the park is the TV Tower which looks similar to the Eiffel tower and is “ground zero” for the numbering of the streets. Streets are numbered North, South, East, West by the number of streets from the Tower. So a corner that is north 3, west 2 would be two blocks west and 3 blocks north of the TV Tower.
There are three ideal times to visit Sapporo Japan: for the Sapporo Snow festival, for cherry blossom time, and during Autumn Festival. The Snow Festival shows off the artistic talents of world class ice carvers who make building-sized sculptures. The cherry blossoms are only in bloom for two weeks but Sapporo comes alive during that time. And the Autumn Festival is the entire month of September and that is when the Odori Park comes alive with food vendors from around Hokkaido. This is when we visited.
They called it a shore excursion as we were docking in Sapporo. Wrong. We docked in Muroran which is a two hour bus ride from downtown Sapporo. The train only takes 90 minutes – but still a little far for a shore excursion.
But the festival is amazing for the quantity, quality and overwhelming choices. Each city block was devoted to a style of food. Each area had the food stalls situated on the outside of a central area with tables and seating. They have directories (in Japanese) for each of the areas to pinpoint where the different vendors are located. The Autumn Festival is really for the locals – and tourists are just the lucky beneficiaries.
I should also mention that if you are visiting Japan and have an iPhone, you should add a SUICA card to your digital wallet. If you have an Android device, there is a SUICA app. This is a digital payment card that you can use in many places, including most trains and subways. You just add money to the card digitally, and then tap-and-go. It is a huge convenience not having to carry lots of yen and get change in coins. I’ve found most 7-11’s, small stores, many restaurants and ALL of the vendors at the Autumn Festival took the SUICA card. I’ve even been able to use it in many taxi’s.
At one end of Odori Park was the “best of Sapporo” – the vendors selected as the choicest food. Then there were blocks of grilled meats, another of seafood, another of alcoholic beverages (local wine, sake, and of course Sapporo beer). We started at the “best of” and wandered through each block. The smells were incredible, and in true Pavlovian style we started salivating. We stopped for a bowl of miso ramen which is the style preferred in Sapporo. Among other things, it had sweet corn kernels in it. Unexpected but very delicious.
We love Japan for its orderly and socially responsible attitudes. After you order and pick up your food, you walk to the center area of the block which has the picnic-table dining areas. Sharing the table with strangers is what is done, as space is at a premium. And afterwards, everyone busses their own table. We searched high and low for garbage bins only to finally find that one of the corner tents wasn’t a food stall but the trash collection area – staffed with friendly people to take your trash, dispose of everything and sort it for recycling. Oh for the US to be like that.
We continued our pilgrimage looking for additional bites. In the seafood area were were compelled to try the fresh grilled scallops. Here they opened a live scallop, added some seasoning, and grilled it in shell on an open flame. They also had snails, but we passed on those. The scallops were very tasty and we would have had more, but we were only half way down the park and so had many vendors left to check out.
We also saw a booth grilling Wagyu beef on a stick – who isn’t going to love that! Added one more item to our stomach. This was followed by some drinks from the block with alcoholic beverages.
And at the last block we found the dessert vendors and tried a crepe folded to be a cone and stuffed with semi-frozen whipped cream and then topped with a vanilla creme brulee. The whipped cream was a surprise – I was expecting ice cream. But this was a lighter dessert that was refreshing.
I should not forget to mention that the place was packed! We were there on a weekday from 1-3pm and every place had a long queue. It was filled with businessmen, students, housewives with babies and a few tourists like us. But we were the minority. This food festival had been going on for 24 days when we were there, and it was still going strong. Clearly the word had gotten out locally of which stands had the best food and so long queues. There were also enough vendors that you could come daily and never try the same vendor twice. For lunch and dinner!
Three blocks to the south of Odori Park is the primary shopping street. It is covered and closed to traffic – and filled with all many of shops and eateries for tourists and locals alike. It’s four blocks long and is worth a stroll to at least walk off the over-indulgence of the food festival.
While we didn’t see much of Sapporo, in reality it is not a town filled with tourist attractions. It is a bustling town that enjoys life and being able to be outdoor during the late spring to early fall. Afterwards they deal with snow and of course have the snow festival. We will be coming back for the food but more importantly to see the ice carvings at the snow festival.