On April 19, my boyfriend and I stayed overnight in Sapporo for just a casual stay. Originally, I was just going to go for a day trip on the 20th, but my boyfriend suggested staying the night, and I figured it’d be worth it totake advantage of being there overnight for the extra time.
April 19th: I got on the usual bus after work, and arrived in Saporo around 7:30. The first order of business was to check in to our hostel for the night, and aftter putting down my things, I headed around the corner to my restaurant of choice for dinner, Chilli Inhdou Vietnamese. After the last time I tried a Vietnamese place, I felt like Sapporo needed a redemption for pho, and because Chilli Indou is only open from 4pm onwards, I decided it was a good opportunity to go. The menu and vibes seemed promising, and though I was tempted by the fried spring rolls and the pork vermicelli dish, I was here to try out the pho today. Specifically, the beef, made with Hokkaido beef. They ended up serving it with some cilantro, lime, chili sauce, fish sauce, and vinegar. Some of these were interesting to add to pho…If you’re craving or missing Vietnamese ingredients, they also sell them in house!
Upon first sip, the soup definitely was comforting for a cold day, and I immediately thought it was better soup than the other pho I had. The fried shallots on top were an interesting choice I have never seen on pho, but I noticed them selling jars of them, so maybe it’s a thing they wanted to show off? Some meat slices were tender, but others were a little tough, but I did like how they were decent chunks of it. I just wish there was more meat…There also seemed to be some pepper on the meat that rubbed off into the soup too. As for the noodles, they were ok, nothing to special to note. I was hoping to see some hoisin sauce around or even bean sprouts, but I guess it wasn’t authentic enough to have those.
A not-super-fulfilling dinner is the perfect way to transition to dessert plans! This time I’m trying a new evening-only parfait place, another one of the alcoholic parfait places, Parfeteria Pal. I had looked up the current menu of the three earlier, and decided I liked Pal’s selection more. The parfeterias rotate their menus seasonally, so they always have 6 parfaits, with some having alcohol and some not, and any given time of year is bound to be different than the last time you go.
Unlike Nanakamadou, Pal’s doesn’t have a digital wait system, but luckily when I got there, the line was super short, and I only waited for 20 minutes! The vibes and interior are the same, but Pal has 3 rooms instead of the Nanakamadou’s 1. The menu layout is essentialy the same, but I did notice some subtle differences in the drink offerings, though I didn’t get one. This time, I opted for the Red Koi Nobori, which fortunately for me, had no alcohol component! Interestingly enough, at the moment, each parfeteria is doing a koi flag parfait, with one being yellow, one red, and one blue.
This one is composed of edible flower, fresh strawberries, pavlova (meringue), pistachio gelato, ruby chocolate, franboise kanten (jelly), cookie crumble, creme d’Anjou (cream cheese), yomogi gelato, bean cream, gyuuhi (mochi), genoise (sponge cake), white sesame tuille (wafer), white sesame langue de chat (biscuit cookie), stewed Hokkaido beans, matcha tiramisu, and red bean paste jelly. When served, the waitress specifically said if you’re taking a picture, to take one from the top because it’ll look like the pole for the flag.
I could tell you I was amazed by every single ingredient, but honestly, when it got to the interior of the parfait, most of it ended up being mixed together. It did taste really good, but I’m not going into detail about everything. I’ll leave it up to your imagination. My favorite part though was the pistachio gelato, and the small mochi gyuuhi pieces.
Then I headed back to the hostel and chilled the rest of the night until my boyfriend was done with his usual Sapporo evening routine, ha!
April 20th: Checkout was at 10, and my boyfriend wanted to get Shabu Letasu for lunch, so we headed out a bit before 10 to grab something small to eat to prep our stomachs for all you can eat. We stopped by Nigirimeshi, and I got the saba toro (mackerel), and my boyfriend the salmon butter. The saba only came in shoyu, but I wanted to try the shoyu flavor anyway because I’ve never seen an onigiri place offer that.
Overall I really like it, especially because of how soft all the individual rice grains were because it was so fresh. There was plenty of fish included, and I think I like the soy sauce over the salt because it was actually less salty. I’m not sure if I’m crazy, or if it was the soy sauce, or the mackerel, but I feel like I tasted a hint of wasabi somewhere. It wasn’t so much of a kick, but more of a lingering wasabi flavor. Not a fan of that, but I liked everything else.
We briefly stopped by the ABC Mart in Cocono so my boyfriend could check out the shoe selection, but since it was a Grand Stage (not sure how that’s different than a normal one), we headed down the road to Parco to check out a normal one. Along the way, we passed by Dream Dolce, and I couldn’t help but notice the sign for a limited time strawberry soft serve. There was a milk mix option, and a cone vs a cup, but I chose to get the strawberry only in a cone. The employee warned that it’d be very sweet, but we were ok with it.
It was so good, and didn’t have much of a standard, or artificial strawberry flavor at all. I will say at first I thought it wasn’t as sweet as I thought it’d be, but my boyfriend said it was pretty sweet (and he’s an extra sugar kind of guy). Then I thought about it, and realized because there was still a bit of tartness from the strawberry flavor, that it helped to balance out the sweetness. The cone also had a burnt sugar flavor to it, and wasn’t your typical cake cone.
After doing some shoe shopping at Parco (and getting free water from the Muji!), we briefly headed upstairs to the event floor to check out the current pop-ups: The Apex museum, and the Kuromi pop-up shop.
Although we weren’t too hungry (we could eat, but no regrets on that ice cream though), we headed over to Shabu Shabu Letasu around 11:30 when they open to hopefully beat any line. However, when we went in, they said they were already fully booked out for the day with reservations. Quite unfortunate.
My boyfriend wanted some kind of hot pot though, and except for Shabu Yo in the Donki in Susukino, most other shabu places in Sapporo are only open for dinner (a more realistic option in my opinion). Since he was craving hot pot, I decided to take him to this pork specialty place in Stellar Place, Yuushokusaisa Ichinisan. While I do prefer beef at my hot pot, I was willing to try as it was a pork specialty place. After looking through the menu, though they do have more affordable set meals for lunch, we opted to try the black pork sukiyaki. They did have course meals for an added price, but it mainly consisted of extra dishes, rice, salad, and dessert, and we decided we were okay with just the pork, vegetable assortment, and udon it came with. There actually ended up being quite a bit in the assortment itself, with broccoli, green peas, meatballs, tofu, carrots, chrysanthemum leaf, green onion, mushroom, and spinach. The pork is from Kagoshima, and they also gave us eggs to dip our meat in, as is a sukiyaki thing.
Everything was very yummy! The pork was super fatty, which is usually not my first choice, but I think once in a while it’s okay to indulge, and because of this, it was super tender and melt in your mouth. The waiter said that we could either swish-swish it like at a typical shabu, or let it simmer in the broth for a bit. The broth was very flavorful, simultaneously sweet and savory. I’m not a huge raw egg person, but I figured I’d try it out just because they gave it to us. I thought it was just okay…but maybe I’m just not used to it. I quite liked how thin the udon was, making it very slurpable.
Apparently, this Demon Slayer exhibition commemorating the manga, and probably the upcoming anime season this month, is now doing its Sapporo leg for a couple months, and because we didn’t have big plans this weekend, I decided to get tickets for that day. The exhibition actually opened on the 19th, and for the first three days, you have to buy a specific entry time ticket (I reserved ours for 2pm). The rest of the days is just a ticket to go in whenever you want.
Most of the exhibition was no photographs, except for this one big are at the beginning with all of the manga covers and a big statue of the main siblings. It ended up taking us about 2 hours in the whole place, but we did end up waiting in line quite a bit, as the line moved a bit slow for our pace. The exhibition had some descriptions about “family”, “bonds”, and “legacy”, and first walked through the main characters, the pillars, the main demons, and then a basic chronological order of the manga, with a ton of the original panels. They also had English translations for most of the text!
My actual main reason for going to Sapporo this weekend was to go try the new Nana’s Green Tea seasonal parfait. I would have just waited until the day I leave for Hakodate on the 27th, but unfortunately, the parfait is only until the 26th. So I had to go, ha!
Officially, the parfait is supposed to yse strawberries to symbolize the colors of spring. Using sweet and sour fresh strawberries, there’s also amaou strawberry bean paste, strawberry bean paste cream, strawberry sauce, shiratama and milk soft serve as topping, and matcha jelly. There was also the usual parfait corn flakes. My boyfriend got the seasonal latte.
Everything was so yummy, and I especially enjoyed the strawberry bean paste (very unique tasting!), and their corn flakes (somehow kind of roasty!). There was a ton of texture variety, and the slight bitterness of the matcha jelly helped balance out the sugariness of the rest of the dessert.
We actually could have made the next bus in 10 minutes, but decided to stay so we could have time to grab boba and McDonald’s (can you guess whose request is whose?). An hour would clearly be too long, so first we went to Sapporo Gyoza Seizousho to pick up some gyoza to-go for my boyfriend (someday, I shall eat there fresh). After that, we headed to The Tea for boba, and McDonald’s. Along with boba, I also picked up an earl grey chocolate chip scone (oops no picture, 290 yen). I microwaved it for breakfast the next morning, It was pretty decently sized, and when reheated, it was a bit soft, slightly crumbly, and had a very nice, interesting flavor to it. Read about my boba here!
And we got on the bus at 6 to go home!
This time, we stayed in a double room at Plat Hostel Sapporo Sky. I was lucky enough this time around to be traveling with my boyfriend so we could afford a private room, which ends up becoming cheaper (and probably a better experiene!) than two capsules here. The room was big, spacious, had a mini fridge, some hangers, and was a large bed with a ton of space underneath for storage. The best part about it is that is came with a private bathroom! Usually in hostels you share a bathroom, and is the case most of the time even with private rooms, but we lucked out. Definitely recommend. The only complaint I have is that it’s a bit far from city center proper, but it’s still relatively close to Susukino.
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