2026 Japan Trip: Day 5 - Sapporo

Day 5 - The Seattle of Japan

In some ways, you can say that the vacation really begins now - as it is the start of a whole set of new things in Japan. The first time in an island not named Honshu, the first of four straight new places to visit, stay, explore, etc. When I told friends, colleagues, others, about this trip, the fact I was visiting Sapporo always got a reaction. There was less of a reaction when I explianed to them about the Kyushu part of the trip (the South island) there was less of a reaction. The reason largely is for people somewhat aware of Japan, Sapporo is known, the North island is known - mainly as a ski destination and winter destination. For that reason, I don't have any higher expectations of Sapporo than my visits to Fukouka, Nagasaki and Kumamoto later in the trip, but certainly I am no less excited. I don't ski - I do hike and walk trails and the world of Hokkaido seems ripe for that.

To get there of course I had to get out of Tokyo, which was fairly easy. It is a quick 25 minutes to Haneda around 7:15am, and an even quicker check-in and security (Star Alliance Gold, Baby!) so I got to the lounge in Haneda's ANA terminal quicker than expected, by 7:55, 40 minutes before boarding. This shouldn't be a bad thing, but very oddly, the domestic lounge has no food. They have a ton of drink options, which aren't all that helpful at 8am, but no food. Anyway, I'm not a breakfast person, so it didn't matter too much. Soon enough we boarded a domestic configured B777-200 (both ANA and JAL love flying widebodies on domestic routes), and were off to Sapporo, a quick 90-minute flight that I slept for most of.

The immediate thing you realize about Sapporo is the weather, in that it is perfect. Now, I landed Monday morning (10:30am) and there is rain in the forecast from Tuesday Night through Wednesday (not bad rain, but somewhat everpresent) but until that comes, the skies were faily sunny, and there was a light breeze and it was 70 degrees. Just awesome. Less awesome is that the airport is a good 50 minutes outside the city. They have a cheap, convenient dedicated bus that leaves every 10 minutes or so, but still, landing at 10:30 but not reaching the hotel (Fairfield, a way better quality in Japan than the US) until 12:10 was annoying.

Less annoying was lunch at Garuku Soup Curry. The Soup Curry - basically a Japanese bowl of soup, spiced with the famous Japanese Curry flavors, thinned a bit, and then loaded with tons of random interesting elements, is one of the staple novel foods of Hokkaido, and Garuku is one of the more known ones. Known enough that I had to queue for about 20 minutes, but it was worth it. The bowl came packed with lightly cooked chicken leg and thigh, loads of mushrooms including tons of maitake, four quail eggs, brilliantly fried brocolli, and more, and of course the curry itself. All of that was about $15, and together with a cold brew I had a wonderful lunch for $20 that truly was excellent. A great entry into Hokkaido cuisine.

With good weather today, and a day trip to Noboribetsu planned for tomorrow (assuming the weather holds up there...), and bad weather on Wednesday when I would be back in Sapporo, I decided to try to get all the outdoor sites out of the way with today. There aren't loads of them, but the ones that are there take time and are worth taking them in, because you get a sense so well of what Sapporo is about: forests, evergreens, natural beauty. 

This really hit home when touring my first site, the temple complex of the Hokkaido Jingu shrine, that sits at the north end of the Maruyama Park. The Hokkaido Jingu shrine is something of a combination of a traditional shinto shrine in structure and overall design, but mixed with a log cabin type motif - that's where my whole "this is the Pacific Northwest of Japan" comes from - that this is like if you told a bunch of Vancouverite limberjacks to build a shinto shrine. Helps also with the towering trees and evergreens around you as well. It's admittedly a bit of a weird combination this, but it works so well, and is only compounded when walking through the rest of the park.

From there, I hugged the hilly line of this part of West Sapporo, down towards the dual sites of the Fushimi Inari shrine, and the Mt. Moiwa ropeway and summit. For the first, it is Sapporo's version of the fairly well known (in traveler circles) shrine type that is now spread out across Japan - the series of red gates, usually high in number and frequency placed close together. The one in Sapporo is nothing unique, and is probably skippable, assuming you are seeing one in Kyoto (the OG) or somewhere else, but it also sits a six minute walk from the Mt. Moiwa ropeway, so why not.

The ropeway is the real sight here, a two part cable-car that takes you up about 1,300 feet up the summiot of Mt. Moiwa, a large hill overlooking the city. Now, I don't fully know why it is two parts, because the first part is probably 85-90% of the way up, but either way, it helps break up the trip a little I guess, and both rides allow for great photo opportunites, as does of course the rooftop summit where you can really see the sprawl of Sapporo.

Sapporo is an interesting city from this angle - it is by far the tallest point int he city proper. There are no real skyscrapers - the tallest buidling might be a radio tower that sits in the Odori Park (a lovely city park with amazing flowers, fountains, etc.), and the cluster of buildings around that. There are two or three domed stadiums, the main one being the Sapporo Dome (now with some corporate sponsor name) which has hosted WBC and World Cup games. There's the glimmer of the sea to the North, but not truly visible, and then a vast expanse of rolling hills, some small farms and what not behind you. It is a lovely setting and also the starting point for a 50-minute hike down. Now, you can also hike this up (which I passed probably 15-20 people doing that), and of course you can also not hike it down (sadly, the only ticket for the ropeway is a roudn trip...), but I chose to hike it down and that was a great call.

The hike down is lovely - never too steep, though at times quite rocky. There are human-made steps at various points that are helpful, but at no point is it really too frought other than one where they put up ropes to ensure you can hold onto something. Every now and then there are these little buddha statues with red ribbons - probably two dozen sets of these on the way down. It truly is a great hike, though I do think hiking up will be quite difficult.

It still worked up enough of a hunger and appetite that I headed back towards the main town and went to a craft brewery, Moon Sun Brewing, that sits right across the street from teh Fairfield. Other than not letting me get a table, the place was excellent. They sat me at the bar despite being emtpy when I arrived, but admittedly by the time I left they had filled every table. The beer was quite good, enough so that I am definitely considering getting some to go cans later on, and they too have this great mobile ordering system taht seems quite omnipresent in the beer bar world in Japan.

This all led to the main event of my first day in Hokkaido, which was an omakase meal at Sushi Sohei. Now, I didn't go in planning to have two of these back to back, but it did work out that way. It was an interesting contrast, though off the top both are excellent. Sushi Sohei may have had better sushi, but I think the prepared dishes were better at Sushi M, but either way they were both excellent meals. Sushi Sohei is one of many top-flight omakase's in Sapporo, and is the one I actually got a seat at (I put in requests for three of them). So it wasn't like I specifically picked this one out, but it was excellent. The meal starts with seven appetiziers (so unlike Sushi M who intersperses them throughout the meal), which are all of the moment and weirdly where you can't take photos (I guess because he wants to keep these as a surprsie). They varied from sashimi, to fried eel, to a wonderful mint, spot prawn and potato dish. The star though is the sushi - ten pieces of sushi that are all so brilliant, and then a special a-la-carte option of up to five additional (I got two of them), which were all just stunning and perfect. In some ways this trip just started - but in another way, I've now finished two of my three omakase sushi meals and feelign sad about that!

My night events in Sapporo were fun. There is this 4x4 block (my hotel is on the edge of this) where there are bars and restaurants and izakayas and more bars as far as you can see. Who knows how many of them are good, but seemingly every building you walk by has six to ten floors, and in many of those floors there are bars. I had a list picked out and while i was too late for my intended first stop of Bar Owl & Rooster (will go tomorrow or Wednesday) I first settled in at Bar ReCalm, which was a classic Japan cocktail bar. Sadly, they didn't have too many of their own options, but their exacting touch made classic options still excellent. From tehre I went to Bar The Hubris, which was not at all as pretentious as that name would suggest. They did have their own creations - some were interesting Japan-ified plays on classics, and a great vibe. Bar The Hubris was a favorite, and its 3am closing time makes it one that I may likely find myself back in. It was only these two for this night, but with at least three additional (including Bar Owl & Rooster) on my list, it will be interesting to compare and contrast as this visit goes on in what I am already seeing as a top city in Sapporo.

2026 Japan Trip: Day 4 - Kamakura

Day 4 - Temple City 1.0

I say this with love, but you better like temples (shrines) if you want to enjoy Japan and Korea. More than that, you better enjoy trying to spot the narrow differences between some of them and what make them all special. Now, they aren't all special - do your homework, understand going in which are the better ones, which are the more forgettable ones, etc., and you will leave a happy person. Kamakura was my parents first taste of that - in a way it was mine as well, the one day trip I actually managed to do during my time in Tokyo in 2013 (as I've now revealed a few times, by that point in my RTW Trip I had fairly strong home sickness/FOMO and was super lazy). But even for me, this was like re-discovering it.

The day started with us managing to get out of the house early enough to get an earlier train down to Kamakura than expected. The train from Shimbashi there is about 50 minutes, but its essentially an extended commuter train that was fairly busy for the first half of taht until we got past Yokohama, at which point it emptied out a lot. After a quick bit of shut-eye, we got to Kamakura, which I really forgot about how small and beautiful it all is. Even the area right outside the station, with teh Kamachi-Dori shopping area on one side, and the trains to the various temples on teh other side - including the little Enoden train/tram, which we took from the main station over to Hase station, which is where our first two stops were - the Hasedera Temple and the Kotoku-In Temple (more known as the Great Buddha temple). We went to the latter first, because it was a bit further away so we could start there and walk back. 

The Great Buddha Temple is mostly about the Great Buddha, a 30-foot or so bronze buddha statue in the middle of an otherwise fairly staid temple complex. The other beauty is the scenery, all of these are tucked into various bits of hills, forests, etc. You know you are now far away from Tokyo and far into the beautiful Japanese scenery. The Hasedera Temple which was next is more a proper temple - a real first temple for my parents, full of the many different smaller buildings, the various steps adn walls adn steps and walls, the lotus flowers, the buddha statues all over. The Hasedera is probably the best temple in Kamakura (to me), and the best example of what they will see a bunch in Kyoto and other places. My favorite aspect was this running character of Nozomi that they have, a fat, smiling cartoonish buddha statue and figure that shwos up a half dozen times in the temple complex, and is beloved I guess to have its own souvenir store right outside.

Trying to break up the string of temples, from there we headed to lunch, which first took us on a 20-minute traipse through Kamakura, including ten or so minutes walking along the beachfront. Now, this isn't the most beautiful beach in teh world, but it was weird to remember taht Kamakura is a beach town, something that I think gets (probably rightfully) lost among the temples and secrets. Anyways, the walk over to our lunch got the appetite going so we could rightly experience the brilliance that was Unagi No Okamura - a classic Unagi spot where we get our own private room (sliding doors) and first a series of small bites, from great picked vegetables to a lovely mushroom chawanmushi, to miso soup and then of course the main event, a brilliant box of perfectly cooked barbecued unagi over rice. Eel is one of my lowkey favorite things within the Japanese cooking ouevre and I'd dreamed of meals like this - so much so I have booked and/or planned a couple more. Those have a high bar to clear, as Unagi No Okamura was just brilliant.

That meal also geared us up for more walking than I had planned in our post-lunch tour of temples all to the Eastern side of Kamakura, which has a series of them in the hills. The chasallenge was they are all 10-15 minutes apart walking, which is just short enough to make calling a cab to this more remote part of the city not a great business case, but just long enough that the steps add up. The first temple was the Engaku-Ji, which was a lovely setting - wide open\landing areas, regal buoldings, giant stalks of bamboo but all in the backdrop of the forest. I would still rate the Hasedera slightly higher, but the Engaku-Ji was a lovely start, and its a stone's throw from the Kimi-Kamakura station (the stop right before Kamakura proper on teh JR) - a great starting point to head back towards town through the temples to come.

The next was the Meigetsu-In, which was probably the worst of the lot but still had some unique elements - it was the most built into nature (it was basically a botanical garden in small, with a temple inside), and had some lovely elements, like the classic sand and rock garden setup at its main temple area. We sadly didn't make it to the Kencho-Ji temple in time, but did make it back to the main town and the Tsurugaoka Temple complex. I forgot about this one alltogether, but it is a gerat spot. Built right off the town, its a wonderful ending spot like we used it for, as you walk through it (essentially walking in reverse to the normal direction) and it spits you out right at the Nortern edge of the pedestrian shopping village.

In the middle though you get a giant temple (granted, up a lot of steps), some really open plazas, and a graet lake that was just covered end ot end with lilypads and lotuses - a few in bloom, but all open and serene, even with a few birds milling about. It is these things that remind you just how special some of these temples are at the end of the day. Kamakura overall was just a joy throuhg all the temples, even if the shopping at the end was a relative disappointment. This is of my own making though, as I had looked up specific places to visit for souvenirs and handicrafts in all my other stops - you know, the new cities, but didn't for my time in Tokyo. In the end, I did find a nice magnet (weirdly got into the magnet game the last few years, but my rule is it has to be of a secondary city), but also found time to go to a beautiful craft brewery called BTaps that sits a block away from the station, overlooking the pedestrian shopping village. The beers were good, cold and exotic and a lovely way to end a lovely day in Kamakura.

The day itself wasn't over - if anything, the main event was to come, as I was taking my parents out to Sushi M, an Omakase Sushi spot that I went to last time in Tokyo. Tis was their combined Father's Day and Mom's Bday (July 19) gift, made more interesting because heretofore my Mom doesn't eat sushi. She really never has, genearlly doesn't like raw food. Now, this seems to be mostly because she hasn't tried it, but it was an aversion that was going to be tested.

In the end, she had all of it , without nary an averse reaction. There was a bit of me fearing that she would throw up or something. But instead, she enjoyed it. Understandably the rawest, fattiest pieces she didn't like as much (for instance fatty tuna), which makes sense for someone who has never had sushi before, but of course those are also the best pieces. Sushi M also has about five or six cooked preparations thrown in throughout the meal taht are all as excellent as the sushi, and of coruse there is a great calm in just watching the sushi master do his thing. In the end, she liked it, my dad loved it, I loved it, and we had a great time.

From there, they went back to the AirBNB, and I checked off the last remaining cocktail bar I hadn't done previously, going to The Bellwood, which is jsut as lovely this time as last, still in its speakeasy, 1920s decor and clothing, but the cocktails themselves were more innovative, more interesting than them reliving old 1920s classics last time. I also had a long chat with the lead bartender, who convinced me to visit his favorite music bar, Bar Davy, which was a few blocks away, and that too was graet - a bit more rock and roll and less polished than the peerless Bar Fortified I went to yesterday, but given that the Music Bar concept is the one throughline of basically all Japan, I better get used to and love the range of these places as well. If anything, the music aspect of Bar Davy was even better than it was yesterday, and for what amounted to the last thing I did in Tokyo, it was a great way to end my time.