札幌時計台 - Sapporo Tokeidai is as exciting as it seems. We snapped a picture and headed towards Nijio Market. This fish and seafood market has historic origins that date back a century but has become little more than a tourist attraction. Locals (including Akira) don't recommend it as it's a bit more expensive since it caters towards visitors. Fortunately (or unfortunately) we were in no shape to eat after that crab dinner.
Although Nijio certainly tried...
At this point we only had a couple of hours left in Sapporo and considered the pros and cons of squeezing in the Sapporo Beer Museum. Ultimately, I was forced to embrace the concept of beer for breakfast, and we hopped onto a cab to make it over there.
The Sapporo Beer Museum is freeeeee. Although the beer isn't free. Although there appeared to be free tastings in the afternoon. Regardless, we wholeheartedly embrace free things. Inside is a lot of information about how to make beer and the history of the Japanese beer industry. We got to take a whiff of raw hops which doesn't smell like what I thought it would. More importantly, we witnessed the future of Sapporo Beer.
When they will use snowmen to cultivate their hops and grow giant hops stalks upon which all the beer research will be performed. Current Sapporo technology needs to resort to beer balls:
The Sapporo Beer Museum is also home to a Mongolian style barbeque joint which is supposed to be quite good. For some reason they call that type of meat "Genghis Khan." Just though that was interesting; we had other plans of course. At last it was time to sample the beer.
Well I did anyway. Above you see Sapporo Classic which is only available in Hokkaido. Also only available in Hokkaido is Ribbon Napolin. It's orange, but doesn't taste like orange at all. Actually tastes like classic asian cider with maybe a touch of ginger. The Sapporo Classic was richer in taste than Sapporo Black, but to be honest, I can't really describe the difference that well. No matter. We bought some to go as well as these amazing Curry crackers that were complimentary with my beer.
Our last stop of the day was 花まる - Hanamaru kaiten sushi in Sapporo Station. Akira gave us a call before we headed out from the Sapporo Beer Museum and kindly jotted his name down before we got there. Net result: an hour long wait turned into ten minutes.
A fitting end to our stay in Sapporo. We ended up eating the best kaiten sushi of our lives and way too much of it too. The sheer volume of our food consumption did not bode well for the rest of the trip.
The salmon and scallops may have been the best I've ever had and I went back and forth between them while sampling some other fish including the sanma above. Sanma is a bit of a regional specialty that can't be found outside of Hokkaido and it tastes similar to saba with perhaps a lighter and more delicate flavor. Yeah it was delicious and we were properly food-comaed for our 3.5 hour train ride.
And thus we left Sapporo with full stomachs and a crapload of omiyage. Notable is the Sapporo X Royce beer that we also got at the Sapporo Beer Museum. I'll let you know how Japanese chocolate beer tastes.
Next up: Taking the Super Hokuto to Hakodate
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