Quiet Day

Ōdōri Park and beyond from Sapporo TV Tower

Today we had a quiet day - Tom desperately needed it and I think we were quite happy to not be gallivanting around.  We didn't put on any alarms and woke up naturally around 8.30 ish.  We had a lazy morning: breakfast, laundry, catch up on scrap booking (yes Tom is making another one, and this time it is pretty much his own work).  We headed out of the house around 11.15, it was grey and raining again.  We walked down to the station where Matt made some more ticket reservations.  Then we went to find an underground walkway / shopping mall that heads to Ōdōri Park - the main park of the city.  The underground walkway / shopping mall is there mainly to escape the winter.  It means you can get to the main parts of down town Sapporo without going out in the cold, very handy when it is snowing, windy and minus 15 degrees!

Breadless burger

When we got to Ōdōri park the sun was out, hurray.  We went to the TV tower and bought tickets to the observation point at the top.  Here we all managed to lean against a glass window which was leaning outwards.  Didn't look much - but was a little scary.  It was a lovely view over Ōdōri Park towards Ōkurayama where the ski slope from the Olympics of 1972 still remains and is still in use (winter only of course).

We then went to look around the shopping district - mainly so I could make a mental map of it myself  as I will have a shopping day next week whilst the boys have a train day out.  Best way, I can dilly dally and they don't have to wait for me and get bored.  They are off to an ice museum which sounds fun, but a day shopping is needed and I am more than happy to do it.

We found a 5 floor Daisō which is almost compulsory, but on the way came across a Mos Burger, which is Japan's fast food burger joint.  It is a little different to MacDonalds etc.  First of all you order and then a waitress delivers your food, explains what it is and performs a deep bow.  The menu is quite different too - you get the usual burgers / cheeseburgers etc, but also ebi tempura burgers, shrimp burgers, teriyaki burgers, yakiniku burgers (very thinly sliced meat) etc etc.  You don't have to have them in a bun either: you can have moulded rice instead of a burger bun or even lettuce instead of a bun.

Sapporo TV Tower

After studying the menu Tom went for a hot dog, I had a rice burger with yakiniku filling and Matt a rice burger with ebi tempura filling.  It was all delicious, but the rice does fall apart as soon as you pick it up, so it is impossible to eat nicely or in fact without it all falling apart on you.  As we were eating, Tom spotted an old style tram going around the streets so we promised him a ride as soon as we came across it on street level.

After lunch we headed to Daisō for a quick view (not shopping, although both boys came away with something!) and then we headed to the covered shopping street for a look.  You are never that sure what you might find in a covered shopping street, but they are normally quite interesting.  At the first junction we came across the tram lines so we got on.  It does a city loop, and it was a flat fare regardless of how long you were on it for so we decided to do the whole thing.  It was pretty slow (mainly due to city traffic being so busy), in fact the whole journey took 1 hour, oh hum, it was a nice sit down.  We then went in search of 3 o'clock donut and found one after walking the rest of the length of the covered shopping street and Ōdōri park.  Then we walked back to Sapporo station.

High above the city

We were then in quandary, it was 4pm, what do we do about tea?  The options were to hang around for an hour or so with nothing in mind to do or as we were at the station, just jump on the first express train that came and jump off at a stop and see what we could find.  We went with the train option.  We ended up on the express that takes you to Hakodate and got off at the second station: Minami-Chitose (quite close to the airport).  Matt had found an outlet mall next door to the station on Google so we thought it a good bet.  We got off at the deserted station and found the outlet mall, the pavement towards it was overgrown with weeds, there wasn't one person around, we were wondering if it was a good idea...we got to the entrance, not many people around, but there were some.  We were wondering if it was a Kendal K village scenario, there were loads of shops there, some big brands and all were open and staffed, just there weren't many customers.

We found a food court and headed there, it was a huge building, we walked in to find about 3 couples having some food.  The food counters were open, just there were no customers so no hustle or bustle. We went to 3 different counters to order our food: soup curry for me (a Sapporian speciality - very liquid curry soup with chicken and lots of veggies in it - very tasty, although I managed to splat my new dress with the sauce - duur!)  Tom plumped for Western food and had spaghetti bolognaise with tonkatsu (something you find in many restaurants in the west?!).  He ate pretty much all of it as well! Matt went for a set dinner with chicken karaage and was very happy too.  A plus of the restaurant was that it was in the flight line of aeroplanes arriving to the airport so he was able to plane spot.  Unknown to us he has built up an encyclopedic knowledge of airliners, and was merrily calling out: "That's a Bomdadier Dash 8, Flybe have loads of them" etc etc. He likes to go on flight radar on his iPad watching aeroplanes around the world, and has obviously taken it all in!

The usual monstrous portion

We came home on the Express train which was...wait for it...10 minutes late!!!!!!!  Not only that, but there was no apology or explanation for its lateness - a shocking, shocking affair.  Matt was very unimpressed.

We came home, Tom did his scrapbook and got ready for bed.  Suddenly we heard a massive cry from him - I thought he had hurt himself, although couldn't work out how.  Oh no, he had locked himself in the toilet!  He had depressed the centre of the handle to lock it and couldn't work out how to unlock it.  We thought (maybe) he had learnt his lesson in Malaysia last year when he locked himself out of his room, with all his luggage inside, but no, he did it again this evening, but this time locked himself in.  Luckily Matt was able to free him pretty quickly with a strong thumbnail (I was busy looking for my wallet to get a credit card out) but really, will the boy ever not fiddle and why lock yourself in the toilet when it is just us 3 in the flat?!

He went to bed quite happily after that and fell asleep almost immediately, it was a quiet day, but he's still tired.