This year, Culture Day is 11/3, and because it’s a Sunday, we get the Monday off! This is also the last three day weekend of the year, so I’m spending it in Sapporo doing things on my bucket list: going to Mt. Moiwa and visiting Jozankei! Jozankei is Sapporo’s onsen town, and with that, I’ll have been to all three of Hokkaido’s main onsen areas!
November 2nd: I’m heading to Sapporo on my usual bus, and later on in the day I planned to go to Mt. Moiwa and see the autumn illumination in Nakajima Park! First stop, was the limited time Tokyo Revengers exhibit in Daimaru.
I arrived around 10:30, and stopped by a Starbucks. I was hungry, and they recently came out with an apple pie using apples from Aomori. It might be Starbucks, but I’m trying that apple pie. It also fit nicely into my schedule, so I could get it toasted for me. No point in me getting it to-go when I don’t have a toaster at home. Weirdly enough, it came with a free coffee (espresso?). Unfortunately, I don’t drink coffee, and I wish I at least had a tea option. Is this normal? I’ve never gotten anything eat-in at Starbucks here before. The pie comes withcustard, caramel sauce, cinnamon, nutmeg, all spice, along with the pie and apples.
The pie had a strong cinnamon aroma, and had big, soft chunks of apple inside. The thin crust itself was a bit soft in some places, but the very surface was flaky. The layer of creamy custard on the bottom was very yummy, though it did make the dessert a bit heavier. I tried the coffee as a non-coffee drinker, and it was…fine.
I spotted this mini handmade market in the underground, and bought a couple bagels from a bagel stand on my way to Daimaru to check out the Tokyo Revengers Exhibition. Even though I haven’t read the manga (the exhibition does cover spoilers), I’m a fan of the anime. Plus, there was some exclusive merchandise, including a pack of cards. If you know me, I’m an avid playing card collector!
The exhibit was pretty cool! There were these recreations of a set of costumes that the characters wore, and giant black and white statues of Mikey and Takemichi. A bunch of framed manga panels lined the walls, including rough drafts from the author. There was also an exhibition exclusive original voiceover area.
On my way to lunch, I passed by the underground again. This weekend, they were also displaying the annual Chrysanthemum Festival, with a ton of flowers lining the sides of the walkway.
My lunch of choice for the day was the Taiwanese place at Cocono. The menu was pretty interesting, and I was looking for a new go-to Taiwanese spot in Sapporo. I went with the set that comes with the pan-fried xiao long bao and lu rou fan. Each set comes with Taiwanese pickled vegetables. I also noticed a new sign that advertised boba. It can’t be a Taiwanese place and not offer boba! However, the options were a bit suspicious, with the top being a chai milk tea, and all of the photos had whipped cream.
Overall, the meal was, fine? The dumplings were super hot, the bottom was crispy, and the inside was filled with juicy soup! The filling was meaty and flavorful. As for the rice, the meat was a bit dry, and not super tender, but the general flavor was there. I appreciated the vegetables on top, even if it isn’t the most traditional.
Then I grabbed boba downstairs at The Tea! Read about my boba here!
Check-in for my hostel wasn’t until 3pm, but I wanted to put my backpack down and not lug it around all day. Fortunately, my bed was ready, and I got to check in early!
Then it was off to the Mt. Moiwa area! I wanted to stick around to see the sunset, but I also went a bit early because there was some other things to do in the area. This was also my first time riding the Sapporo cable car! It’s a flat 200 yen fee no matter how long you ride.
Everyone may rave about the Fushimi Inari in Kyoto (the super Instagrammable spot with a whole bunch of red Torii gates), but did you know Sapporo also has a Fushimi Inari shrine? I’ve never been to the Kyoto one, and though not as windy of a path, Sapporo also has a lineup of red Torii gates, with no crowd! Unfortunately for the Instagrammers, this shrine doesn’t allow pictures, but this way, you really savor the moment more. It was super pretty, especially with the fall leaves. Here’s a picture of the cute path across the street instead.
Right next to the shrine, is Missu House, a gelateria and parfait place. It seemed like their parfait of the month was an apple themed “Fruity Fairy”, which seemed enticing, but the picture also had a couple slices of cake on top, which made it a bit less enticing (after asking an employee, it turns out there’s also caramel sauce, and the cake is a fruit pound cake). Then, I glanced inside the gelateria, and they were doing a campaign, because they were closing the gelateria portion for the winter season in a few days (the parfait terrace is open year round). If you buy a double scoop, you can get a third for free. This was a pretty good deal, and I figured I could theoretically come back for their parfait. I went with a scoop each of earl grey, mango, and cherry blossom.
The sakura flavor was light at first with a bit of an artificial taste, but after having a few bites, the articificial-ness mellowed out and wasn’t too flowery. The earl grey was very good, and the tea flavor was strong and apparent. The mango was also very good, and all of the scoops were creamy and yummy!
I walked around the area for a bit eating my ice cream, including stopping by a couple of cute bakeries. At one point, I literally came across three different coffee shops all next to each other!
When I finally decided to head to Mt. Moiwa at 3, I saw signs that said that sevice was suspended due to strong winds. Had I come all this way just to not make it? I still made my way to the entrance, in the hopes that I could still explore and see something. Employees were still ushering people inside, and when I asked about the service suspension, the guy said that although short, the suspension would start in 30 minutes, so going up was still possible if we took the last ropeway car right now. I wouldn’t be able to stick around for the sunset, but since I was there, I might as well go up. The roundtrip for the ropeway and the mini cable car costs 2100 yen for an adult.
I ended up having 10 minutes at the observation deck, which was plenty of time to walk around and take pictures. There was also this Satellite of Lover’s Sanctuary thing, and you can buy heart locks and declare your eternal love and lock it on the railings.
I made the last mini cable car down just in time, and took the second to last ropeway down, as advised by the staff who said the last one would be pretty crowded. On the way down, they played the same audio as on the way up, pointing out Sapporo landmarks, and the directions were flipped…but the very last line was “and now, we’re approaching the midway station” in English and Japanese. We very clearly left from the midway station, so either this line was misrecorded, misplayed, or no one ever bothered to correct this.
I took the free shuttle bus from Mt. Moiwa back to the ropeway stop of the Sapporo cable car, and got off Nakajima Park. My original plan (once I saw the sunset), was to swing by and see the autumn illumination, but at 4, it was still light out, and the lights would start at 6. I took some daytime fall foliage photos, and to kill a bit of time, I rode the subway to Shin-Sapporo. Facebook had an ad for Strawberry Closet, a cute vintage item shop that was doing a weekend collaboration pop-up with a few other brands. I was going to try to fit this elsewhere into my schedule, but this worked out perfectly here. I’ve encoutered Strawberry Closet’s pop-up in the underground a few times and the last Mono Village, but this is my first time at their physical store.
It’s a small space, but everything was very cute! In particular, they had a lot of American items, which brought back a ton of nostalgia. I used to play with the G2 my Little Ponies they had on display! I was very tempted by a jacket, but it did have a couple of (light) stains, so I refrained, and instead bought a cute trinket for an upcoming birthday present.
At this point the sky was completely dark, and I headed back too Nakajima Park to see the lights. The areas with lights were Ginko Avenue, Shobu Pond, Hohei-kan, and the Japanese Garden. Compared to a couple hours before, now there was a ton of people, and everyone was clearly taking pictures. The Japanese Garden was this kind of small enclosed area with its own pond, and it had an insane line. The line itself moved quite quickly though.
For dinner, I’m heading for Ginza Kagari. This tori paitan ramen spot, originating from Ginza Tokyo, was a Michelin Tokyo spot, and I discovered they have a branch in Sapporo! I got the truffle version of their tori paitan, and for whatever reason I got asked shoyu or shio, so I said shio. The truffle part is the scoop of truffle on the side, as well as what I believe to be truffle oil to finish.
The ramen was so good. The broth was creamy, and thick, and the noodles were chewy and bouncy, not too thick, and not too thin. I appreciated the fancy veggie toppings! The truffle by itself was quite interesting, and mixing it into the broth changed the flavor very subtlely.
November 3rd: It was finally time to head over to Jozankei for the first time! Now, along with it being a main onsen town, another big reason I wanted to go was because one of the Sapporo Hatsune Miku manholes is in Jozankei. However, it’s just my luck that the weekend I finally go, the manhole is on a business trip to a manhole convention until the end of November. Now I have to go back eventually to see it…
For breakfast, I bought a chocolate muffin from Cocono’s Espresso D Works takeout window. I passed by this window the day before, and I can’t pass up a muffin…They had this apple cinnamon bread, but I realized it was a whole loaf, and that would have been a bit much. I thought them opening up at 9:30 was early, but after I bought it, I realized their cafe opens for breakfast at 8.
The muffin was pretty good. Rich, milk chocolate was melty on top, and oozing throughout the insides of the muffin. The muffin was soft and a bit moist.
After killing some time and may or may not spending some money on gacha, I went to Kan no Kaori for an early lunch. The thing about Kan no Kaori for me, is that this is the only Korean place I’ve found in Sapporo that offers jajjangmyeon, or Korean fried black bean paste noodles. It’s one of my favorite Korean dishes, and I was willing to risk ordering it despite finding no reviews of anyone ordering it.
It was pretty good. I tasted the sauce by itself first, and it tasted pretty accurate, but after I mixed it in with the noodles, the flavor got kind of lost. There were tiny chunks of potato and meat, as in, very tiny. The potato chunks were bigger than the meat chunks, and to be honest, the meat chunks had an instant quality to them. Maybe I’m being delusional. The description says pork, but I expected bigger pieces. The cucumbers on top were a nice addition. Noodles were a little thinner than usual, but otherwise the classic chewy yellow noodles.
After my noodles, I went to Afternoon Tea to try the new parfait available for 2 weeks. They were doing some kind of tea festival campaign, and as part of that, the parfait is tea-themed, and comes with a customizable chai tea as part of the set. You can choose between normal and oat milk, and the flavor of the chai. I went with a cocoa berry milk chai. I don’t really drink chai, but because it comes with the set, I chose what appealed to me the most. The parfait comes with chestnuts, berries, a milk tea pound cake cookie, chestnut ice cream, 5 spice chai whipped cream, kyoho rooibos tea jelly, houjicha gelato, black cocoa feuillantine, western pear, and milk sauce.
The chai was like a warm chocolate milk with a slight berry aftertaste. I didn’t really get much tea or chai flavor, but I suppose if I wanted that I should have picked the masala flavor. I liked the hojicha ice cream and fresh pear chunks the most here. The grape jelly had that inevitable medicine flavor, but otherwise went with the rest of the ingredients well.
My bus to Jozankei was scheduled to leave at 2 (with everyone meeting up at 1:45), which left me just enough time to grab boba for the bus ride. Read about my boba here!
If you’re staying at a hotel in Jozankei, chances are they’ll probably have a free shuttle bus service from Sapporo to the hotel, which likely requires a reservation. I highly recommend for anyone that plans on going! I did get there a bit before 1:45, but it seems like everyone else decided to be early, and before it was even 2, we departed because everyone was accounted for. On the way there, I saw a rainbow from the bus!
After checking in and putting my stuff down, I decided to explore the area for a bit. Near my hotel was a foot bath, but I didn’t bring a towel, and I would go to the hotel’s onsen later, so I skipped it.
A bit down the path behind the hotel is this small waterfall, Shiraito Falls. The pictures I saw were very pretty, but maybe I came at a bad time. It was a little sad and not much fall action when I went.
After Shiraito Falls, I headed over to Tsukimi bridge. This is the bridge that’s suppsoed to have the Miku manhole, which is unfortunately shipped out temporarily until the end of the month. Next to the bridge is Jozankei Gensen Park, with a bit of another footbath, a bit of a view of the town, a mini waterfall, and a statue of Mizumi Jozan.
If you keep going straight from the bridge, you’ll see a few souvenir shops and cafes, and at the end of the road is Iwato Kannondo Temple. Inside the temple, you can also pay a small fee to go in a cave of sorts and see a lot of jizo statues.
I wanted to eat apple pie from this one cafe, but I’m not giving their name because I’m still salty they ran out of apple pies while still having the audacity to wave their apple pie flags outside their cafe. If you go, you’ll know where I’m talking about.
A bit southwest of the temple is Jozankei Futami Park. Apparently, there was an illumination at night here until the end of October, and there were still signs around as remnants from that. The park has a small seating area, but also opens up so you can go down to the Toyohira River, and the path extends all the way to Futamitsuri Bridge.
After I got back to the hotel, I went to check out the pool. It very interesting that an onsen hotel had a pool, but since it was included, I might as well get my money and time’s worth. There’s an adult water slide that requires a paid rental tube at the entrance. The main pool area is a big loop, with a play area in the middle for kids with smaller water slides, but there is one adult-friendly one that cycles back into the main loop. Aside from this, there is a wave pool, a small kids play area, a couple hot tubs, an artificial waterfall, and a shallow long pool with built in chairs to lounge in. When I went, the 25 meter long one was closed for renovation. They have swimsuit-specific dryers to wring out any water. I haven’t seen those since my childhood swimming class days!
Now, when I went to the pool, I left my wallet in my room because I didn’t think I’d need money to go swimming. It turns out, the rental lockers for the pool cost 100 yen (though it looks like it’s the return type). I didn’t want to go all the way back just for a coin, and the hotel’s solution to this is that the lockers for the basement onsen are free, so you can store your stuff there and walk over. This was a bit troublesome for me (especially because I wear glasses and could not see anything on the walk over), but it ended up being a not-bad idea. My post pool-shower ended up being the onsen shower, and after that, I went for a dip in the bath.
This basement onsen was huge, and spanned two floors. Granted, the first floor was just one bath and the shower area. The second floor also had a shower area, but spans much more area. This was the most bath variety I’ve ever seen in an onsen. There was the standard hot baths, a cold bath, and open air bath, and this shower waterfall experience. There was a sauna, a steam room, and the most thing unusual for an onsen, was an ice room. The ice room was my favorite. I’ve only ever seen it at a Korean spa, and appreciated the addition.
I bought a milk for after my bath. Very glad this one takes digital payment, but again, no physical money on me. Who brings their wallet to the bath?
Dinner wasn’t at a specific time, but the my dinner ticket was eligible from 6-9pm, with a total eating time of 90 minutes. The selections were pretty varied and interesting, with quite a lot of items from Myanmar and Nepal. The dessert selection was pretty cool, and this was the first time I’ve ever seen a chocolate fountain in Japan.
Not a whole lot stood out to me, but I liked the scallop miso soup and sushi and sashimi stand. From the desserts, the canele was nice, and of course, the chocolate fountain was very fun.
November 4th: It’s the end of the long weekend, and time to leave Jozankei and Sapporo and head home.
I woke up early in the morning to use the rooftop open air bath. At my Lake Toya hotel, I had no choice because the rooftop one was only open for women at night, but the nice thing about this hotel is that both top and bottom floor options are available for both sexes regardless of time of day. Even though I’m blind, I wanted to see the rooftop view while soaking in a hot bath in the morning.
The rooftop onsen is much smaller than the basement level one. It’s composed of a changing room, shower area, and the onsen itself. I’m not sure if it was because the weather was cold, but both the indoor and outdoor pool felt a bit lukewarm. The outdoor pool was also a bit dissappointing. The pool itself wasn’t very big, and although there was a bit of a view, it was mostly blocked off by glass panes. I understand the safety aspect, but there wasn’t too much to look at.
My breakfast ticket was for 7:45. The options were a bit fewer than dinner, but that made toal sense given people probably will eat less in the morning.
The options were pretty good. My favorite was definitely the customizable mini kaisendon, and the corn soup was very satisfying. I also liked how the yogurt wasn’t presweetened.
The shuttle bus back to Sapporo was at 10. The ride overall was pretty smooth, except for the rainy weather. It did stop in the afternoon though.
For lunch, I headed for Ushi to Sakana in Tanukikoji. I noticed a signboard for this place a few weeks ago, and it seems they’re new to the area. After doing some research, the main shop is in Kyoto, and the parent company also owns several yakiniku places. After talking to the staff, apparently the Kyoto one is so popular there’s a long line, and they have to give out numbered tickets. Here, there’s no line at all! If you check their Instagram, they might also have a secret menu item. During lunch, they only sell their wagyu volcano, with toppings for an added fee.
It was amazingly yummy! The basic set comes with a bowl of Yumepirika rice, topped with four thin slices of fatty wagyu and a raw egg yolk. On the side, is a Kyoto style dashi stock, and wasabi and green onion. I also found some secret tender, fully coked wagyu underneath the rice too! Their dashi was good, warm and comforting. After the not-great dashi I had in Aomori, I was glad that this one was up to standards.
My Sapporo parfait of choice for the day was at Sato. I’ve wanted to try their chocolate mango, but always put it off in favor of seasonals at other places. Recently, they unveiled their current seasonal fruit parfait, the matcha red bean pumpkin. I’m not generally a pumpkin person, but this one looked good. It was only when I arrived and saw the menu that I realized they were no longer serving the chocolate-mango and replaced it with a chocolate-almond parfait. Very sad. I went ahead with my original plan with the matcha one. The parfait has grapefruit, a pumpkin langue de chat, matcha and red bean macaron, cassis, strawberry, pumpkin ice cream, matcha red bean aice cream, kanten jelly, red beans, mikan, pumpkin and nutmeg étuver, cut strawberries, red bean candy, soft serve, rice crispies, matcha paste, and cassis sauce.
It looks very pretty, as all parfaits do. However, to be honest, I have mixed feelings about this parfait. Many of the components were really good! I liked all of the ice creams, and the slight sourness from the fresh fruit helped balance out the sweet sugary items. The macaron had a crunchy exterior and soft chewy interior.
My main problem was the steamed mashed pumpkin. Either I’m not a nutmeg person or something else was wrong, because the instant I ate it, it didn’t taste very good (I’m sorry!). There was this saltiness to it, but also my taste buds couldn’t handle whatever it was. I also appreciate the art of crafting something this beautiful with nice ingredients, but the ice cream was already melting when I got my parfait. I think the girl who made mine was making 2 at the same time, so combined with the precise placements she was doing, it took twice as long.
Finally for the ride back home, I’m grabbing boba from The Alley again. Read about my boba here!
I got on the bus at 3 to go home! A bit earlier than usual, but I did stay the weekend and was tired, plus I had laundry to do when I got back, ha!
This time, I stayed in Helio Hostel in Sapporo for a night and Jozankei View Hotel for a night. I stayed in Helio the last time I was in Sapporo, and this time, I was very glad I got a bottom bunk. Overall experience was the same, very nice service, although this time the giant communal toothpaste was gone. Mysterious (not that I needed it).
Jozankei View Hotel was very nice, and was pretty well worth the price. It’s by no means the fanciest of hotels, but it has a ton of amenities, and the Western style room was very cute and quaint. They even gave me a 2 Liter bottle of water! The pool area was pretty big with a lot of variety, and their onsens also had much variety too. If you didn’t know to bring a swimsuit, they have a rental area. I highly recommend going with someone instead of by yourself. They even have a mini arcade! There were lots of international staff, and pretty foreigner friendly. The dinner and breakfast buffets were pretty good. If you want the free shuttle bus, be sure to call and reserve ahead of time! I normally don’t take pictures of my hotel rooms, but this room was too cute not to.
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