Japan:: Sapporo, Christmas Day
On Christmas morning we exchanged a couple gifts and then went to the Sapporo beer museum. The hostel owners told us about a free shuttle we could use (they were so nice). The museum is in the original brewery, which is a really cool old brick building. The employees thankfully gave us a booklet explaining the exhibits in English. At the end of the museum there is a hall for beer tasting. I’ll say that Sapporo Classic, which is pasteurized, is better than Black Label (the kind we get in the US) which is filtered. Alas. We also tasted beer ice cream- weird but still good.
One of the employees helped give us directions to our next destination, the Mt. Moiwa ropeway. We were kind of nervous because it involved a train and a transfer to a bus, and it was already dark (the sun set at around 4:30). We seemed to always get lost as soon as it got dark. At the bus station we realized we had no idea where to go, so with a bit of help from a couple, we got on a bus, I said our destination to the driver, he said yes and we crossed our fingers. The stop we got off at was on a small road on a steep slope- and remember it was dark- but we were in the right spot! We had to walk up a very slippery, icy hill to the ropeway station.
This ropeway was one of the more expensive activities we did, but it was well worth it. A cable car took us halfway up the mountain, then we switched to a smaller type of car thing that took us the rest of the way up. At the top of the newly-reopened observatory was an open rooftop from which you could see the lights of Sapporo stretched out in every direction. You could see very far since it was so cold and clear. While we were up there it started to snow! Coincidentally, the girl from the brewery who had given me directions also showed up, and she took our picture.
Off to the side of the observatory was an old shrine, and probably to protect it from all the people, a replacement bell was built on top of the observatory, so we rung the bell. Can you imagine walking all the way up a mountain to go to a shrine?
While we were up there we also stumbled upon an a Cappella group singing some Christmas songs and some Japanese songs. They all wore matching polka dot shirts. The room the performance was in was all glass at the front so we could see the snowy woods behind them- very magical.
The restaurant in the observatory was closed, but good old rice balls kept us going. We weren’t sure how to get the bus going back, and it may have stopped running (or so I guessed from an old man trying to explain something about busses to us) so we walked in the general direction of the city center. It was snowing, and quite pretty, but all we had to go by was tram tracks and I was kind of worried. We walked though neighborhoods, under highways, walked and walked and then we finally ended up in Sapporo’s nightlife district, Susukino (kind of a times square feel). We were exhausted! We decided to eat in a nice Italian restaurant for our Christmas dinner, which was a good choice- the pizza was fantastic! We also learned what a red eye is: beer and tomato juice. Sounds gross but it’s not.
It was really late and we actually caught the last train home. Whew! We later determined that we had walked about 5 km (in the snow)!!
