September 14th to the 16th this year was a three day weekend, as the 16th was a public holiday, Respect for the Elderly Day. Originally I had plans to just chill in Sapporo, hang out, and check out the annual Pride and Autumn Festival every September, but I heard that a friend from Fukuoka was coming up and hanging out with a friend in Asahikawa, and they invited me to join them! Instead, the weekend turned into celebrating pride with friends, a ton of food, and fun with friends!
September 14th: Bus to Sapporo as usual, meet up with my friends, and check out Sapporo Pride and the 2024 Autumn Festival!
I got off my usual bus around 10:20, and since I was going to meet my friend who was arriving around 11 at a cafe, I decided to take a peek at the Autumn Festival (which spans Blocks 4-11 of Odori Park). I checked out Blocks 4 and 5, and was attracted to this bagel stand. Well, the booth’s name had bagel in it, but they were actually selling “croissant bagels” and interesting cream cheese flavors. I got a Broken Chocolate flavor (350 yen) to take with me in case I got hungry.
I ended up eating it a couple days later on the road, so I couldn’t reheat it or toast it. It was definitely not a bagel, but also not super croissant-like either. The feel was more like a cinnamon roll, in that the pastry was rolled up and you can pick it apart and eat it, but the texture was bread-like (I guess that’s the bagel part?). It wasn’t over-the-top chocolate-y, and had decently sized chunks spread throughout as well.
I headed over to Daimaru because Afternoon Tea just started their new seasonal lineup recently. I was super excited to try this shine muscat mille feuille pastry that’s only on their menu from 9/12-9/25. Unfortunately it was nowhere on the menu outside when I was looking to confirm…and then I saw a poster that said they serve it everyday starting from 2pm. The website didn’t say that…this sort of screwed up my plans because the window for this is so short. but since I was already there and had plans with my friend, I decided to just order the parfait (I was going to get it at some point, but unlike the muscat dessert, this was available from 9/4-10/31). I added a seasonal tea to make it a drink set.
The tea was supposed to have a fruity aroma, and is a second flush darjeeling in the image of a La France pear. It was…fine, as it was indeed a darjeeling with a fruity aroma, but I didn’t really get pear vibes from it.
The parfait came with sweet potato cream, kyoho grape jam, green grape jelly, caramel whipped cream, granola, sweet potato ice cream, caramelized sweet potato, sweet potato chips, and grape topping. It was super yummy, and I loved how creamy the ice cream and sweet potato forward the whole thing was. The jelly had that grape-y refreshing aloe flavor to it, and the grape jam on the bottom wasn’t too aritifical grape-y. My friend got the apple juice and apple pie, and said it was the best apple pie they ever had.
Our Fukuoka friend wasn’t going to land for a couple hours, so after vibing in the cafe, we visited the Pokemon Center for some birthday freebies, and went on a walk around Sapporo so my friend could do some Pokemon Go.
We met up with my other friend around 2, and proceeded to head towards the festival for some food! We took a look around the first couple of blocks, and my friends got some drinks and food. I ended up buying a steak bowl from a booth, inspired by my friend who had gone a week earlier (it wasn’t the same steak bowl unfortunately).
I saw unfortunately, because it looked really good…but did not live up to expectations. First, the picture made it look like it would come on some kind of garlic rice, but the bowl only had white rice. The steak chunks looked really nice and juicy, but they ended up being a bit tough, and hard to bite into smaller pieces. I had to chew a lot, and my mouth was sore from chewing so hard for a couple days…I really liked the tangy dressing they had on it though. It was also disappointing because I had been meaning to try out the actual restaurant for a while, so I’m hoping it’s just a street food flop.
We made it up to Block 6 before we realized it was nearing 3, and the Pride booths would close up at 5. We headed over, and there was a truck converted into a stage, and this year, one long street of booths (I think last year there were two short streets).
The Pride booths were open on both Saturday and Sunday, but the actual parade would take place on Sunday like last year. Since I walked last year, I didn’t feel the need to walk again if my friends weren’t going, and we went around the booths buying cute merchandise and taking photo booth photos. No free Coke this year, but we did see an Ikea booth and an ANA booth.
Around 5pm, we felt like we were done with Sapporo for the day, so I went to go get a drink from Starbucks for the bus ride to Asahikawa (I ended up finishing it waiting for the bus, oops). Particularly, I wanted to try out the new seasonal frappucino, the Yakiimo Caramel Frappucino.
The drink had caramel sauce, sweet potato chip pieces, and blended sweet potato chunks topped with whipped cream (I forgot to ask for nonfat milk since I haven’t had a milk frapp in a while…oops). It wasn’t too potato-y, but I would have liked it to be more potato forward to be honest. For my friend though, they liked it because it was much sweeter and less potato-y than last year, so it all depends on the person. There were a lot of crunchies for texture.
We rode the 5:40 bus to Asahikawa, which takes 2 hours (costs 4700 yen for a round trip ticket, which saves you 300 yen), and we ended up ordering Pizza Hut delivery for dinner. The fries and nuggets were pretty decent, and having American-style pizza was really satisfying. We ended the night playing Moving Out on my friend’s Switch!
September 15th: This was our full day in Asahikawa, and we were going to check out the festival and take a walk around the city!
In the morning, we woke up around 8, and made q quick 7/11 run to get some breakfast. I went with a soy milk and a salmon onigiri. We took it to-go and ate at home, and around 10am we set out to go preview the food festival. Along the way, we passed through Tokiwa Park! It was gorgeous.
We managed to see a few booths before we had to get going, because my friends had a nail appointment booked at 12 on the opposite side of the city. On the way there, we took the bus, and then made a Lawson pit stop for a bathroom break and some refreshments. I bought a chocolate pastry to tide me over until it was festival time.
A couple hours later, it was finally time to check out the festival! The festival is one of the biggest food festivals in Hokkaido, and places from as far as Northern Honshu and all over Hokkaido come to sell their wares and foods. It spans from inside of Asahikawa Station to all the way down Heiwa dori, the main shopping street in town.
We started from the station, and browsed around the main station plaza. I immediately spotted a Taiwan promotion booth, and next to it, a booth selling Taiwanese food, including boba. I really didn’t expect to find boba here (later I found out there were quite a few), so I jumped on the chance to buy some boba. Read about my boba here!
I also bought a small bowl of scallops there. It was super yummy, tender and soft, and seasoned with some salt on top right before they serve it to you. They called it teppanyaki, but it was more stewing in a pot and stirred occasionally than being grilled.
We went into the station, where it seemed like there were mostly ice cream, pastries, and produce vendors, and wandered to the back of the station where there was a mini handmade crafts market. I ended up sucked in to buying some earrings…
We passed by this stand (I forgot the booth’s name, oops) selling roast beef sandwiches earlie. My friend and I were still thinking about them, so we headed straight back to go get them. It was super yummy, with fluffy white bread, a bit of lettuce, and the roast beef was cool, and very flavorful.
We walked down the rest of Heiwadori street to check out what other stalls were available, and we ran into my Asahikawa friend’s friends, who came from a local mochi festival earlier. They were telling us about some stalls they checked out the day before and highly recommended, so we went to go check them out. The first was a pudding shop with a huge variety of flavors…but they were sold out of everything except their original flavor for the day (makes sense, it was around 4pm). They said they would restock everything except the pumpkin the next day, so we made sure that we would return at 10am for breakfast when the festival starts again.
There was a booth selling Ainu cuisine, namely venison sausage (which we saw other booths had), and a bear meat hot pot which intrigued all of us. We split that one, and the stewed bear meat came in a nice light broth with kelp, radish, and carrot. The vegetables were tender, and the bear meat honestly tasted like beef, or a nice pot roast as my friends called it.
My friend and I wandered into a small local bookstore, and after we met up with our other friend, we went to a bigger mainstream one in the mall so they could buy some manga. After that, it was time for dessert at my friend’s favorite cat cafe!
This cafe has three cats, one was resting in some decorations above us, one who wasn’t in sight at the moment, and Maron, who was chilling in a chair when we first walked in. We decided to sit in the table area where she was in hopes of getting close to her. I ordered a mango parfait.
I didn’t expect the parfait to have fresh mango, and although some of the chunks inside were still a bit frozen, the comepletely thawed ones on top were super soft and sweet. There was also whipped cream and rich vanilla ice cream, on top of some corn flakes. The owner warned us that Maron is a picky and no fuss cat, but she took to my friend right away and even fell asleep on their lap.
We ended the night with some of my friend’s homemade chili and played through Untitled Goose Game.
September 16th: It was the final day of the weekend…Time to say goodbye, get in some last minute festival food, and potentially see a movie!
Determined to get our pudding revenge from the day before, we showed up back at the Shimokawa Town egg stall for some breakfast. Since we were there, we all got multiple, and I got the chocolate one, and genmai hojicha. Both were creamy, airy, light and luscious, but the hojicha one was slightly thicker. Neither was too sweet, and the flavor was just right! Very yummy.
I also picked up a basketclam rice because it sounded good. The rice was nicely seasoned, and there were clams, but they were super tiny, so I wished there was more…my friend picked up a spiced venison sausage from the Ainu stand the day before, and offered me a bite. It was pretty good, nicely juicy and flavored. I also spotted a stand selling boba in legit plastic cups in a slightly bigger size, so I had to get boba right away in case we didn’t walk by a stand that sold it later. Read about my boba here! We also passed by Asahikawa’s mascots, Asappi and Yukkirin.
My friend picked up a skewer of freshly grilled beef tongue and let me have a bite, and though it had cooled down a bit so it was slightly tough, the flavor was really good. We ended up back at the station, to pick up some real New York bagels from Hartsdale Bakehouse. Apparently the owner (who speaks really good English!), lived in America for 20 years, and all my friends were excited for real bagels. I personally bought a plain, tomato, and an everything. I had the everything later in the day because I was hungry, and I should have toasted it, but the everything was garlicky, and the inside was soft and fluffy while still having a stiff exterior!
We killed some time at the mall arcade, took a look around, and played some Taiko. My friends picked up some lemonade from this lemonade shop (had a ton of cool flavors and huge sizes!), and then we said goodbye to my Asahikawa friend as we boarded the 1 bus back to Sapporo.
After a smooth 2 hour bus ride, I parted ways with my friend who left for the airport, and I headed over to GU to pick up an online order. Then, I rushed over to the station to catch the 3:30 train to Otaru Wing Bay! On Mondays, the movie theater discounts general admission, so I like to see movies in Otaru when I can on these three day weekends.
I caught my 4:30 movie just in time, and when I bought my tickets, no one else had yet so I thought I had the movie theater to myself. Nice.
Unfortunately, after I had sat down, a few people trickled in behind my seat, so it was not a private movie experience. However, the movie was still really cute, and it certainly has been a while since I last went to a proper one at the theater. The movie ended at 5:50, so I thought that I had to wait until the 7 bus. The train came at 6:05, and arrived at Otaru Station at 6:12. I ran, and miraculously made it to my 6:14 bus. Huzzah!
And that was my first three day weekend of September!
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