Our next stop in Japan was the northern island of Hokkaido – specifically the capital Sapporo and a small ski resort town a bit northeast, Furano. We landed in Sapporo at New Chitose Airport, which is quite a ways away from the city… a 2 hour bus ride later, and we were finally at the Airbnb. At this point I would normally write about the interesting activities we did, but frankly we were starving and decided to get some food which began a long journey into the culinary scene of Hokkaido. I’ll start this post instead with a summary of all the amazing foods we consumed throughout our stay here – because there’s pictures of them all! Out of all the amazing cafes, lunch spots, and other restaurants we visited, the absolute most memorable were the following:

• Harappa Curry – While we’ve frequented many Japanese curry shops at this point, this was a unique Sapporo take on making Indian curries in a Japansese style.
• Sennari Shabu Shabu – A fantastic hot-pot place in Furano, this was an awesome amount of food after a long day of skiing (for Rachel…)
• Sandria – Pre-made sandwiches, savory and sweet. These are some of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had, hands down, and the chocolate + cream sandwich is an incredibly tasty desert.
• Pizzeria de Haru – Oven fired pizzas in a random residential block around Chitose; very tasty dough and the toppings were so good…

We did try to do more than just eat the entire time we were in Hokkaido though… In Sapporo, we spent a lot of time walking around and exploring the snowy streets of the city – especially in search of the many souvenirs we needed to bring back to Tokyo and onwards. We also made a brief stop at the Sapporo Beer Museum where you can read about the almost 150yr history of the brewery and taste some of the classics that Sapporo Brewing made back throughout history. Interestingly enough, my favorite beer was the recipe they used originally… score one for the oldies I guess.

While in Sapporo, we also made our way to Otaru for a day trip – probably the most impressive part of that trip was the sheer number of tourists that flooded the city. We had heard that overtourism is a real problem for many smaller cities in Japan, and seeing firsthand how likely 70%+ of the town was an international tourist (ourselves included…) was wild. Overcrowding aside, Otaru is a beautiful stop on the northern coast of Hokkaido and is a fantastic place to try specialty baked goods with amazing bread and dairy products from the region. We mostly just walked around the snowy canals of the city while hopping from one LeTAO bakery to another… since there are apparently 4 in the town. Rachel of course couldn’t avoid the Hello Kitty cafe when we were nearby, so we popped into this spot and the nearby Music Box Musuem before heading back to Sapporo.

The next and final major Hokkaido-area stop was Furano – a ski resort town around 2.5hrs northeast of Sapporo by bus. While I’m not a particularly good skier (and in fact, don’t ski at all…), Rachel is and so we were excited to see what Japanese ski resorts had to offer. I can’t speak much to the quality of the skiing as while Rachel hit the slopes for a few days, I spent my time in the hotel hot springs (onsen)… very worthwhile alternative. Speaking of the hotel, Rachel booked the La Vista hotel right by the train station, and I don’t think there’s a hotel I’m more excited about recommending than this one… we had a very affordable room, but the free access to not just one, but multiple onsen, the free ice cream to cool down from said onsen, and ultimately the free ramen at the end of the night were pretty amazing perks. I am not embarrassed to say I think we got our money’s worth in just ice cream alone while we stayed here…

Outside of skiing and checking out the various coffee shops and restaurants in the downtown area, Furano isn’t really too bustling in the winter. Spring and summer apparently brings some other options like the Lavender Festival where the blooming lavender field are so expansive, you can only see purple for miles… That said, we did find the Furano Cheese Factory as one option and we ventured on a nice 6mi hike through what would ultimately turn into a mild snowstorm to get there. I know I’ve said this about many of the different foods that we’ve posted about here, but when I say this is the best soft serve ice cream I’ve ever tasted, I mean this is THE BEST SOFT SERVE ICE CREAM that anyone will ever taste. It was some of the smoothest, creamiest and slightly cheesy soft serve I think I’ll ever have a chance to taste, and the one cone felt like we had just ate an entire meal… thank goodness for our lactose-processing capability.

All-in-all we had a fantastic time briefly exploring Hokkaido for the first time (technically Rachel’s second…) and I can definitely see us coming back here for future ski runs, as well as in the spring/summer for hiking.