It's been a while! I should have blogged yesterday but once I flew back from Sapporo, I didn't really feel like doing anything, so I didn't!
If I blogged about every single thing I got up to with my friends in the past week, it would be quite a long post and I am not prepared for a massively long writing session!
I'll break my past week into a couple sections as divided by my ever-changing accomodations (I'm already paying my regular rent and my Japan monthly lease and now...)
Tokyo
I met up with my friends at our shared AirBnb in Ikebukuro, an area I am pretty familiar with (and will be going back to in a few days!). The plan was to hang out for a couple days in Tokyo, then make our way to Hokkaido.
We managed to briefly catch the Owl Festival while we wandered Ikebukuro on the initial night and then got conveyer belt sushi at a non-Sushiro (gasp!!) location!
The next day, we visited the Daikanyama neighborhood in Shibuya. It's like a trendy, upscale shopping area so I didn't buy much personally but it was a fun atmosphere.
I don't have many photos from that day but did take one of the Miffy Cafe. I think it's a permanent location?
I didn't know until now but Miffy is a dutch character and is pretty old?? I guess it's an international cutesy character that has just really caught on in Japan, similar to Snoopy or the Moomins. I'm not sure about Snoopy or Miffy, but cute characters sell well in Japan so it's the number one market for Moomins in the world. I wonder if it's similar for the others.
On our final day in Tokyo together, I showed everyone around my favorite Uneo Park -> Yanaka Ginza -> Suwa Jinja route (similar to what I did the other day or the reverse of this time). We got souffle pancakes, browsed Yanaka Ginza, and walked around some of my favorite places in the area. I cracked my phone screen after dropping it literally less than 3 inches, and then I also saw some cool spider lilies (specifically Lycoris radiata I think; Is that why the supercomputer in Lycoris Recoil is named that?)! I haven't seen them in person before but they are pretty cool!
Sounkyo
We then flew to the New Chitose Airport in the Sapporo area of Hokkaido. We would be hanging out in Sapporo for a few days, but first we drove (not me) a few hours into the interior of Hokkaido. Specifically, into the Daisetsuzan National Park, an area that includes mountainous terrain in the center of Hokkaido. The area also has active volcanos! How nifty!
Oh wait, actually before we drove anywhere, I forced the group to stop in the Snow Miku Museum in the airport!
The museum and gift shop were cool themselves, but I really liked the art by visitors
We stayed in a hot springs resort in Sounkyo. It was pretty relaxing and we had buffet style meals that included traditional Japanese dishes.
The view from my room
In addition to enjoying the hot springs, we made sure to explore the area a little as well. For part of one of the days we were there, we took the cable car and chair lift towards the peak (near Mount Kurodake). I had been worried it would be scary on the chairlift but even though there was no lap-bar it wasn't since it was usually only a foot or two off the ground.
We also visited Kamikawa. Despite being a small town, it seemed pretty hip and had a lot of places to get tasty snacks.
Me in yukata at the resort
Sapporo
After a couple days in Sounkyo, we made the drive to the main Hokkaido metroplis, Sapporo (it's where the beer is from!). On the way, we did some sightseeing. I had the most incredible melon ice cream and yubari melon (a local variety of cantaloupe) at the pyramid observation deck near Biei.
The area around Biei was super nice and had beautiful rolling hills and lots of agricultural fields. The town itself was also really nice, and one highlight for me was the la colline craft shop. They sold all kinds of cute goods and I ended up buying a few magnets shown in the Instagram post below.
From what I gathered, the lady on register duty was actually one of the artists that made the specific pieces I was buying!! She was the namesake of the waco ＊ neco brand and her and her husband made the crafts! There were also crafts by other artists as well and the group generally liked a lot. In a rare twist outside of restaurants, everyone in the group purchased something here! If anyone is ever in Biei, I vote this as a must-see.
Also on the way to Sapporo, we saw a smoking volcano! I'm pretty sure it's Mount Tokachidake. (Un?)Fortunately, we didn't see any lava.
I don't have any great pictures of things we did in Sapporo, but we did have really good omakase at sushinokura. While I didn't like all of the dishes personally, the ones I did like were incredible. This was quite an experience since the meal took roughly 2 hours and consisted of over 20 courses (although each course is usually only 1 piece of nigiri or a small dish). I was completely stuffed by the end! It was really good, I recommend checking it out. The chef was also really nice and cool!
While we were there, we also explored the 2025 Hokkaido Harvest Festival. There were lots of tasty things and it seemed to be showing off goods from around the prefecture (not just from the Sapporo area). One thing I tried that I don't remember having before was Chinese yam. Apparently it's an invasive species in the US but it tasted pretty good when prepared like french fries. The taste was pretty similar to a potato but the texture is like crisper throughout (not a food word guy!)
Originally from the harvest festival website
Return
After a full week with friends, I made my way back to Tokyo.
As an aside, I had flow both to and from Sapporo from Tokyo and domestic flight in Japan is actually so good. Boarding literally only took like 10 minutes for a huge plane. We're talking like 300 seats, people were streaming onto the plane! I think part of it is that everyone seemingly checks their bags since I didn't see too many carry-ons. Japan Airlines also seemed to board the back of the plane first which helped, and there were also multiple scanner lanes for the boarding passes. I do wonder if it's just because it's like a commuter route or something so only business-people go and so no one has any luggage at all or something?
After returning, I didn't quite feel up to blogging. But that didn't stop me from doing an Evangelion stamp rally!
A few of the stamps were a big wonky but I was happy Asuka turned out good!
Overall, I feel like we did way, way, more than I wrote about here but it's impossible to blog about everything. Either way, I'd definitely recommend visiting both Hokkaido overall and Sapporo itself!!