Cool Things in Hokkaido Part 6

Aaaand finally, a few pictures from our last night in Sapporo. The clock tower…was weird, it felt familiar, like it reminded me of something but I couldn’t say what. There were also quite a few sculptures we’d missed, including the moomins ( I love them) so that was nice!

Wings of Desire

Sapporo Clock Tower

Um, whaaat?

Snow sauna

Government building

Pretty scene

Moomins!!

A rather wide Rilakuma

Rilakuma tangle!

Stylised Chopin

Hello sunshine baby

Cuddly tiger

FIGHTO!!

Lovely Ponyo

Um, cute potatoes!

Snowy fountain

TV Tower at night

Icy Gundam

iceflowers

icedragon

icehorse

Temple at night

Lovely Seicomart!!

Byebye Hokkaido!

Cool Things in Hokkaido Part 5

Oops, long time! Things…..fading from my memory….quick post!!

So these photos are from Otaru which is a 30/40 minute train ride from Sapporo. It’s famous for its canal which is lined with lanterns during the snow festival. Also..Venetian glass?? There’s a Venetian glass shop/museum and Otaru Hello Kitty is designed (I assume) to look like glass (there were 4 different coloured versions, I got a blue one, I will start to document my embarrassingly vast Hello Kitty phone strap collection at some point in the near future).

Snow couple

Otaru is also famous for its pretty brick warehouses apparently!

Run away from the building!

Music box

Follow the blue Totoro

I’m gonna eat you!

Pretty wooden restaurant

Pyramid of candlelight

Canal

City of lights

Snowy dance

Heart!

I’m a little snowman, I’m helping!

Icelight

Floating lights

Cool Things in Hokkaido Part 4

Ishiya Chocolate Factory..where they pretty much only make a kind of biscuit called Shiroi Koibito which is a square piece of white chocolate sandwiched between two butter cookies. They do other things but this is their flagship product. They’re nice but a teeny bit expensive… You do get a free one with your entrance ticket though! I’d post a picture but, ah, I ate it already, sorry!

The factory/museum is sort of fascinating though! There’s a big display of tea cups and biscuit packaging, the whole house is like some crazy person’s mansion and it also has a children’s toy museum! I couldn’t figure out why but I do love toy museums! I remember going to the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood a few years ago and despite feeling really ill and terrible I could not stop looking at the doll’s houses..I just couldn’t!! They’re so..weird and small and perfectly preserved! There were no doll’s houses here but lots of other curious things!

Hello Chocolate Factory

All the pretty teacups

Chic little biscuit tin lady

These please

More pretty ladies

This is for biscuits? Really?

Kirsch Liquide!!

Aaahh!

Mmm, too pretty to eat..?

Look! Making biscuits!

So sweet..I want the one with the little suit!

Yes..it’s Michael Jackson clutching a record with mini models of The Beatles on top.

Cute in a cabinet

Cute and also a bit freaky…!

There’s something weird about fake rooms

So here’s another!

Ah, here we go: Shiroi Koibito!

One of my favourite things in the museum!

So my favourite parts were the displays of packaging and the toy museum! The hot chocolate was rather nice too. It would have been even nicer if I had been dressed up in some kind of Victorian dress aaand there hadn’t been any cars/other signs of the modern world visible outside! The gilded, double-handled cups said ‘Victorian Lady’ but the flats/cars/telegraph wires outside didn’t! Not that I don’t love technology but it’s fun to have little *fake historical experiences* sometimes!

Cool Things in Hokkaido Part 3

The Sapporo Beer Museum! The building is lovely. If they converted it into flats I would want to live there. not that they should of course, it should stay a museum. Conversions aren’t always a good thing..Especially church conversions, I just don’t think I could live in one without feeling I was trespassing! Anyway, I digress, here are some pictures!

Pretty red bricks

Lovely windows

English guide

Little snowpeople making beer!

The fat controller!!?

I want this hat

Beautiful!!

I love her expression..

Sweet!

Oh lovely adverts

Me, wishing I could take these home with me

So bright!

What a pretty building..and gorgeous posters. Of course, alcohol shouldn’t be glamorised but…dammit those posters are wonderful! I did buy one..goodness knows where I’ll put it, am running out of wall space but I’ll find somewhere!

Cool Things in Hokkaido Part 2

So..the Pokemon store:

Pikachu! Piplup/Pochama!

Ooh, modern!

Hello Pikachu!

Pokemon lifts!

Eevee! Pikachu! Piplup!

Plushsplosion

Poke-arcade

Getting camera-ready

Fly Pikachu!

Terribly, terribly cute. There was an arcade next door, with lots of Pokemon machines. The store was deserted though! A big change from the Nagoya and Tokyo shops which are packed every day as far as I can tell!

Cool things in Hokkaido Part 1

So we went to Hokkaido last week, it was pretty easy getting there! I feel so strange organising travel, I guess I still feel like it’s something the grown ups should be doing, not me! Still, I managed to book a hotel, and flights (which I paid for at a konbini!). I did phone up the hotel the day before just to check my reservation hadn’t…disappeared or something! We stayed at Mark’s Inn in the Susukino district of Sapporo. It was very nice! Nice room, Shiseido shampoo mmm, nice view, very friendly staff and yummy free breakfast.

Susukino is kind of the shopping/nightlife/hotel district. So you look at the side of the street and see bar, resturant, bar, konbini, ‘Secretary Club’, bar, bar, pachinko, ‘Sexy Nightspace’ and so on…!

The Ice festival is in Susukino and the Snow Festival’s main venue is about a 5min walk away in Odori Park.

Here are some ice and snow sculptures:

Ice bar

Icy hearts

Cute lanterns

The scariest representation of Michael Jackson I have EVER seen

Ice palace concert venue

Totoro To-to-ro!

Cute characters lit by Yakult factory sign

My new obsession: On-chan the HTB mascot

Ponyo floating in space :)

These are just a few of the lovely sculptures we saw, I’ll post some more later. If anyone reads this and knows where I can get On-chan merchandise do let me know in a comment! One of the ramen restaurants in the ESTA building had some little figurines but I was too shy to ask where they’d bought them…

Sapporo sort of reminded me of Trondheim. I guess because it’s a big, northern city, near the mountains. It had the same sort of…shut in/cosy feeling. The amount of snow was similar too..walking around sort of reminded me of walking round Trondheim!

People were very relaxed in Sapporo compared to Nagoya! The subways weren’t full of people pushing and the Pokemon store was *gasp* almost empty! (pictures of that coming up later on).

So, Sapporo: cosy, snowy, fun!

Plush Love

A tiny, tiny fraction of all my cute stuff!

Clever Tamagotchi

The Saddest Bear in the World (courtesy of Tully’s)

Super Best Friends!!

Tooooo cute

Yay!

“I dance for you, you give me a Melonpan yes?”

Also: AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!

AAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!

Every day, something cute drives me crazy :)