Put on your comfy pajamas, pop a big tub of popcorn and settle down with your favorite beverage for our next travel series — Hokkaido. My travel installments are usually broken down by country, but given the size of Hokkaido and the length of time we spent here I felt that it deserved its own billing.
Hokkaido is Japan’s second largest island and the most undeveloped of its four main islands. Perfect for a killer road trip. We started our ten day adventure in Hokkaido’s largest city, Sapporo. Our late afternoon arrival meant we only had time for the most important sights — Sapporo Beer Museum and Daruma Jingisukan Restaurant.
Sapporo beer is the oldest beer brand in Japan founded in 1876. The tasting room at Sapporo Beer Museum was already closed when we arrived (big bummer), but we enjoyed touring around the brewery established in 1877. The brewery is no longer active, but the converted museum is well-designed and very informative. We especially loved seeing the different bottle labels over time, always keeping the famous star that is the symbol of Sapporo beer.
Afterwards, we headed to the famous Daruma Rokuyon for one of Sapporo’s most famous dishes, jingisukan or Genghis Khan. Why Genghis Khan, you ask? Some say the convex grill looks like the helmet worn by Genghis Khan, others say that the grilled lamb or mutton (a rarity in Japanese cuisine) is a meat that the Mongolians ate. You can call it whatever you’d like, but I call it deeeelicious!!
After placing our coats in the entryway lockers to avoid smelling like grilled meat for a week, we stared at other diners for 45 minutes before finally squeezing ourselves around the L-shaped counter, waiting for the chunk of lard to melt to cook our lamb and veggies. Of course, the meal was topped off with icy cold Sapporo beers.
We traveled west by train for an hour the next morning to the small port town of Otaru. Otaru is known for its preserved historical buildings, its picturesque canal and the many arts and crafts stores selling glassware and music boxes. We even found music boxes with sushi on top!
As lovely as the sights were, the hands down winner in Otaru was its snack selection. With established confectionery shops such as Le Tao and Kitaro it would have been unconscionable not to stuff our faces with famous Hokkaido soft serve ice cream, cream puffs, baumkuchen cake and rice crackers, oh my! After trying soft serve ice cream flavors like marimo, lingonberry, lavender, matcha and good ‘ole vanilla, I can easily say that Hokkaido has the best soft serve ice cream I have ever eaten. I’m sure Philip and Jules would agree.
Miraculously we had enough space in our tummies for fried chicken at Wakadori Jidai Naruto Honten. Crispy, salty chicken skin on the outside fried in soybean oil, juicy and perfectly salt-and-pepper-seasoned-meat-for-one-day chicken on the inside. Add in pickled daikon radish and one of the tastiest beers I’ve ever drank, Otaru Beer, and we had ourselves a pretty perfect lunch.
The train ride back to Sapporo gave us a chance to reset our stomachs for the next Sapporo specialty, soup curry. Every region in Hokkaido has its own version of soup curry where chunks of meat and vegetables are eaten with skewers with a bowl of rice on the side. We realized that Hokkaido’s frigid winters must play a factor in its cuisine, since this is true comfort food country. I pity the vegans who come here.
