On May 24th, I went out to Sapporo to hang out with my friends visiting Hokkaido! It was their last full day, and coincidentally, I found another handmade festival event for this weekend. Separate from the Mono Village that happens twice a year, the Handmade Marche seems to be a national event held around the country at various times a year. That, and just hanging out in Sapporo.
My local friend also wanted to hang out that day, and offered to drive me to and from Sapporo! We left a little past 8, and arrived around 10:30, meeting my friends at Sapporo station. We took the subway over to Tsudome, which was the venue for the event this time. I’ve never been to Tsudome, but I believe it’s also the third venue for the Snow Festival. Indoors is slightly smaller than Sapporo Dome. Tickets were 500 yen at the door, but I bought pre-sale tickets for 400 yen.
The item selection is pretty similar to Mono Village, ranging from accessories, bags, candles, clothes, prints, some bread and other foods, and food trucks. The venue strictly didn’t allow pictures (I assume for creative reasons and no live e-commerce purposes). I actually liked the food truck selection here better. Speaking of, after going through half of the venue, we all decided to get food from the one hand pizza truck for lunch.
It was quite good for a pizza that came out of a truck! The pizza was ready in a few minutes, and came out very hot. The cheese was nicely melty, and it was quite saucy too. The crust was crisp on the outside, and fluffy on the inside.
After lunch, we speedran the other half of the venue, and headed back to Sapporo. I left with a haul of one sakura bean paste mochi matcha muffin, one ear cuff for myself, and a few pairs of earrings for my sister. The muffin I had for breakfast the next day. Although the dough wasn’t too matcha-y, there was a huge chunk of sakura bean paste and chewy mochi in the middle. Good muffin.
We headed to Parco first, because my friend is a Parco fan. After browsing a bit, we met up with my boyfriend and other friend for karaoke! Our group sang for two hours, and then my friend went to have dinner with her other friends, and the rest of us to my boyfriend’s bar. They were doing a special birthday celebration that weekend for one of the bartenders’ birthday, so it was much fuller and livelier than usual. I asked for a mocktail like I always do, and this time it contained a similar ingredient list as last week, but with the addition of orange, making it taste like like a carbonated lemonade of sorts.
After a couple hours, we were finally getting hungry, so we headed over to Sapporo Gyoza Seizousho for some gyoza and zangi. As my friends’ last meal in Sapporo, I think they were all pretty happy. It’s actually my first time eating in! I opte for their signature teishoku, which comes with 2 of their giant gyozas and one piece of zangi. The default is the sauce zangi, but you can change to salt for free. It also comes with rice, pickles, and pork miso soup.
It was very yummy! There was a ton of soup, and a ton of ingredients in the soup. The gyoza was plump and juicy, but did fall apart quite easily once a bite was taken out of it. The zangi was a giant, flat piece, with a lot of crispy surface area. It was drenched in a sweet, savory sauce, which did ruin the crispiness a bit for me, but was still plenty yummy.
We attempted three dessert places that are open late, but they were all full, so we ended up saying our goodbyes and parted ways. My friend and I walked back to her car, and we drove home.
Leave a Reply