New Years Day had us learning how trains work in Japan!
We got a train from Niseko to Kutchan, another from Kutchan to Otaru and then finally, one more from Otaru to Sapporo. Phew! It sounds like hard work, but actually was no harder than getting the bus into town 🙂 It’s organised chaos but it works.
At Niseko Station, before we boarded, we stopped for a cup of hot chocolate in a cute little cafe that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Paris. It was wall-to-wall with pot plants and curios, I couldn’t stop looking around.
The hot chocolate was in a cute little tea cup with a saucer and it was perfect. I took many photos of it!
Sapporo city is set out around a main train station, which has underground and overground parts to it. The shopping mall and market are on top of the train station, and everything is very clearly signposted (and you can pretty much see whats there from outside). We were staying just across the road from the station, which made it quite easy to see the sights and sounds. Most of which were fairly close.
Our hotel was really nice. When we checked in the receptionist gave us some little packets of food, when we got to the room we discovered that they were little biscuits.
In true Japanese style, the room was small and minimalistic, but nevertheless packed with a toilet that can sing to you! I enjoyed getting to the room and putting on my ‘room coat’ and slippers.
Our first few days in Sapporo we attempted to order food (which is such fun, as we know very little Japanese, and most of the restaurants have limited English), played video games in the arcade, and went for a late night coffee in a basement cafe/bar.
Obviously we did other things too, but my photos aren’t as good!
One of the days in Sapporo, we went to the zoo!
Maruyama zoo is lovely. It’s quite small, but has a really exciting range of animals to visit…and polar bears! POLAR BEARS! Obviously animals held in enclosures aren’t the most inspiring sights, but I’m always interested to see the different animals that zoos have that might be different to what i’ve seen before. So yeah, polar bears!
There were also red pandas, one of my favourite animals, and a range of different monkeys, hippos and even guinea pigs! The red pandas were being fed while we were there, which was interesting. The panda keeper knew exactly which panda was going to jump where for the food. They’re just so adorable. We were able to see the hippos from underneath their pond, as there was a special sort of cutout bit. The hippo was literally sat on top of us, above in the pond. It was a very strange feeling, as they really are huge animals! I was amused to see guinea pigs at the zoo. There were loads of them in an enclosure. All making a lot of noise!
Some of the two more interesting animals at the zoo were the Yezo Deer and the Timberwolves. The wolves are just amazing creatures, they’re enormous!
The Yezo deer make this weird sort of squeaking sound. It’s quite hard to explain, but it sort of sounds like that weird squeaky sound that your phone makes when you’ve dialled the wrong number!
Overall a lovey trip, with lots of adventures. I was very sad to go home!
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