2025 November Japan Trip - Week 3

Continuing on from week two, now I head up to one of my favourite areas of Japan: Sapporo!

I’m a big fan of cold weather, and snows reach Sapporo before they reach mainland Japan. Oh, yeah - Sapporo is in Hokkaido, a separate island from the rest of Japan. It’s like a whole different region!

Arrival

Flying from Tokyo to Sapporo is pretty uneventful - at least, for a bigger guy like me. Economy aisle seats for space, no window view.

On the plus side: free movies on the seat screens and free wi-fi because it’s a domestic flight! Good stuff.

The airport at Sapporo - New Chitose Airport - is almost on the other side of Hokkaido. Compared to Haneda Airport in Tokyo (a quick 30 minute monorail trip to my hotel, awesome), it’s a mild trek to get from the airport to the hotel. A train line is in the basement levels of the airport, and it’s fine - you’d still have to catch more trains or walk further once arriving in Sapporo Station though, so I don’t like taking that from the airport.

There’s also an airport bus that specifically goes directly to many of the major hotels in the city of Sapporo! So to minimise walking, take the bus!

It’s a good ride from the airport - and at night (specifically, 5pm), it’s cool to see the different rural and suburban areas as we go past, and seeing how the snow affects these areas.

A photo of countryside, with light from nearby towns dotting the horizon. The sky is extremely dark, devoid of light, because of the thick snow clouds above us.

After the airport bus, I still had to walk two blocks to reach my actual hotel. Real close to my destination, much closer than the airport train would’ve gotten me, but still…

A photo of the city streets of Sapporo. LED building signage lights up the streets, covered in snow, with a few cars driving through the snow. It's not deep snow, but enough to make walking a hassle!A photo of the city streets of Sapporo. LED building signage lights up the streets, covered in snow, with a few cars driving through the snow. It's not deep snow, but enough to make walking a hassle!

Snow! Snow!! It’s silly, but I really like seeing how weather impacts places like this - and snow, being such a rarity in Australia, is so cool to me.

I get to the hotel, and make plans to go shopping for nicer snow-ready gear.

A photo of city streets from high up in a building. The streets and tops of other nearby buildings are all covered with snow, and snow is falling to the point where there's only a few city blocks of visibility possible before the world looks like a wall of grey.

Wardrobe VS Early-Winter Weather

I’ll be honest, I was hoping for snow but my only memory of the heavily-snowed Sapporo from my last trip (middle of winter: January 2024) had me going “gee, it was so hot indoors, the snow had zero impact on me since I spent so little time outside, I didn’t end up needing any snow-ready clothing at all”. And that led to me packing for this trip in a way where I left my snow-ready jacket and gloves back in Sydney.

So imagine my surprise when I rock up to Sapporo, step off the airport-to-city bus, and immediately get soaked from freshly-falling snow.

This wasn’t in the memories - it never actually actively snowed on my previous trip! The snow was already on the ground, piled up and out of the way so we could walk easily. What’s all this?!

It took me 10 minutes to walk from the bus stop to my hotel, and in that time I realised a few things about my wardrobe:

  • the trusty ol’ Unity (game engine) zip-up hoodie I wear in Australian cold weather (read: rarely) is not good for snow
  • that same hoodie’s hood is also useless, does not cover my face
  • my long jeans that I wear in Australian extra-cold weather (read: almost-never) no longer fit, squeezing my shins like crazy
  • the gloves that I left behind because I didn’t need them on the previous trip are actually super important when it’s snowing, because your fingers do freeze first (at least, mine do)

In my luggage, I did pack snow-ready jeans. Big thick jeans with padded (down, I think?) filling in the legs. I tried those on before I left and they fit, but I remember being insanely hot when wearing them. Jeans don’t have layers to pull off when going indoors, so I didn’t feel keen on wearing those snow jeans at all.

So, I looked around - Australian clothing stores rarely stock the sizes that I need, and Japanese clothing stores even-more-rarely stock the sizes that I need than Australian stores. But I found a “big and tall” clothing store in Sapporo! Three of them, with a “main branch” variant of the store as well: Big M1.

That store was great, I got some “6L” jackets and some jeans that have better fitting around the legs and shins. Awesome stuff. The need for this stuff was heavily on my mind, even the entrance to the store looked like this:

A photo of the carpark of a clothing store. The carpark is covered in old snowfall.

I got a basic plain black zip-up hoodie to replace my Unity zip-up hoodie, and it’s great! Fits great, hood has a decent size, etc etc.

And I got a nice big zip-up jacket with an even larger hood, different material, and a nice soft fluffy line to the hood. This one is guaranteed to keep snow out of my face:

A photo of me wearing a big windbreaker jacket with a gigantic fluffy hoodie. The hood completely covers my face - perfect protection from falling snow.

I took my time shopping for that clothing, all was great. It was a bit of a trek to the store though - way on the other/north side of Sapporo. By the time I was done out there, it was 4pm - almost night time in Sapporo at this time of year. Carrying big shopping bags of large clothing, I went back to the hotel and noticed something strange about all the snow I saw on the streets just a night ago…

A photo of the streets of Sapporo, with buildings covered in LED signage lighting up the streets. The light from the signage reflects in the wet streets - rain-soaked, with no snow in sight.

The snow melted away! Still, this new Japan-winter clothing came in handy during the time in Sapporo even without snow falling. The winds were freezing, the nights were chilling - I’m very glad I got this stuff!

Nerd Merch

So much shopping to do! While I love the other areas of Japan that I’ve visited, Sapporo feels like a nice and simple place for all things nerdy. Everything is all real close - a second-hand nerd shop is right next to the first-hand nerd shop, which is next to another specialty nerd shop, which is next to a shopping street, next to some restaurants, and so on and so on.

I mapped out my trip in Wanderlog (not sponsored), and my time in Sapporo really did concentrate around the southern part of the city. There’s so many awesome shops for finding nerd merch in Sapporo, all close to each other!

There was:

The Pokemon Center

Mentioned in previous posts of this trip, I know.

This store is right above Sapporo Station! I ended up going here a lot, because as it turns out: staying in Japan for a while - especially when the Christmas shopping season starts - means you’ll see a lot of new product launches.

A plushie of a Pikachu wearing a beanie and scarf rolling a snowball launching alongside a line of new plushies that are “{Pokemon} but if it were made as a snowman” was brilliant, had to get that (photos of that in the next blog post, since that snowman stuff was actually in the last week of the trip!). Also plenty of homewares like new drinking glasses, placemats, mugs, and so on!

A photo of the entrance to the Pokemon Center Sapporo. The entrance is small, but the store stretches on beyond view of the photo.A photo of a display cabinet showcasing several designs of Pokemon-themed drinking glasses and mugs.A photo of product packaging showing how a bath bomb contains a Pokemon figurine and fishing rod.A photo of a toy sea buoy designed to look like a Pokeball from Pokemon. The buoy is floating on the water's surface, and the water is dyed blue from the bath bomb so the actual Pokemon figure attached to the buoy cannot be seen.A photo of a Pokemon hooked on a toy fishing line via its attached Pokeball buoy.

The bath bombs are genius. Fish for Pokemon! And after a day of walking around chilling almost-snowing weather, you’ll want a nice hot bath. There’s a Pokemon thing for every part of life if you look hard enough!

“animate”

Mentioned in previous posts of this trip, I know.

A great franchise chain of stores with one decently-sized store in Sapporo. This store sells first-hand latest-and-greatest manga, anime, fandom merch, art supplies, cosplay supplies, CDs, DVDs, etc etc - I got a great copic marker tutorial book here to share with my very-artsy mum, as well as some soundtrack CDs for Pokemon and Splatoon games.

A photo of a book cover displaying multiple beautiful artworks, all made with copic or alcohol markers.A photo of a book showing guidance on copic or alcohol markers and how to use them to blend colours.

BOOKOFF

Mentioned in previous posts of this trip, I know.

A phenomenal franchise chain of secondhand stores. This was not a “SUPER BAZAAR” variant of the store like I saw in Tokyo Bay, but it was still 4 floors of stock covering things like trading cards, retro game cartridges, plushies, model kits, figurines, books, and so on. Absolutely fantastic place to find older merch. I got plushies and trading cards and model kits here, all really good stuff and in great condition as well!

A photo of a retro Pokemon game: Pokemon White 2 for the Nintendo DS. Older Pokemon games like this are often extremely expensive - BOOKOFF sells this for $45AUD. It was tempting to buy it, but I skipped it. Just know that cheaper old Pokemon games do exist!A photo of a wall of Pikachu and other yellow or orange Pokemon plushies. You can almost see the start of other walls of other plushies as well - BOOKOFF organised their Pokemon plushies by colour, apparently.A photo of a book representing the Violet Book from Pokemon Violet. This was a preorder bonus in Japan and Singapore - Australia misses out on cool stuff like this!A photo of a book showing concept art from Pokemon Violet.A photo of a building directory - normally, a directory lists multiple businesses that are found within a building. This directory lists the contents of each of its four floors - all part of the one BOOKOFF store. It's huge!

Mandarake

Mentioned in previous posts of this trip, I know.

Another franchise chain of secondhand stores. I really like Mandarake stores for their stock variety and good prices (typically cheaper than BOOKOFF, at least for trading cards), but most Mandarake stores in Japan are designed like really cramped little knockoff shops. But the Mandarake in Sapporo is the best that I’ve been to: it has space to let you breathe and walk easily.

And it’s still a huge store as well! It covers the same types of products as both “animate” and Bookoff, but all secondhand. And the Sapporo Mandarake’s cosplay section is huge. I bought some books and model kits and homewares here - it’s a very good spot to find older Pokemon merch no longer stocked anywhere else!

A photo of an entrance to a store named 'Mandarake', with numerous aisles of pop culture merch visible from outside of the store. It's a huge store!A photo of a display case containing two extremely large Gundam model kits. They cost $3000AUD and $4400AUD - the most-expensive Gundams I've ever seen!A photo of a display case containing Gundam model kits that are 30-50 years old.A photo of a wall of not-quite-trading cards for Pokemon. These are extremely retro - not from the Pokemon TCG, but from an older collectible series.

Suruga-ya

I didn’t end up buying anything from this one, but it was another second-hand store in the same building as Mandarake, and took up a chunk of the basement floor as well as another floor in the building. Good variety of goods if your arms and backpack aren’t already full of shopping by the time you’re done in Mandarake!

A photo of an entrance to a shop full of pop culture merch.A photo of a rare costumed Pikachu plushie, wearing ornate ceremonial robes and kneeling on a cushion. I don't know what this plushie was commemorating, but it is selling for $120AUD - it must be rare and/or old!

Don Quijote and MEGA Don Quijote

Sapporo has at least two Donki stores that I’m aware of, and they are both like if a grocery store was also a department store covering all types of products anyone might need in their entire life. The regular Donki was 2 floors of goods, the MEGA Donki was 5 or 6 floors and also included additional trading card stores in its upper levels. These are fantastic stores to visit even if you’re not grabbing nerd merch - they are a fantastic place to get “I found this food in Japan, try it!”-type items to share with people back home as well.

GEO

Great store for videogames, manga, TV shows, movies, electronics, and miscellaneous food and drink and so on. Kinda tucked away in one of the covered shopping streets in Sapporo, and I think they’re a franchise chain as well, but this is another great spot to visit if you’re questing for nerd stuff like I was. Just keep Google Translate handy - it’s all in Japanese in this store, no occasional English labels like in the other places I’ve listed.

A photo of a covered shopping street, with shops lining the left and right of the photo while the street stretches to the horizon. Sapporo, being in snow-capable weather for most of the year, has a lot of covered pedestrian streets!

I bought a lot of merch across numerous visits to all of those stores. It’s been awesome.

White Illumination

It’s like Vivid Sydney, but more-sensible and Christmas-coded and enhanced by snow.

A photo of a printed poster describing the dates and location of the Sapporo White Illumination 2025 festival. It starts on the 21st of November 2025, and is in Sapporo's Odori Park.

I rocked up to the opening night, and it was snowing and packed! There was a great variety of German hand-made arts and crafts and decorations to buy, plenty of food and drinks (and an amazing chocolate smell from an almond booth), and a great chunk of Odori Park covered in wonderful light installations.

The German markets:

A photo of a busy market stall, which is designed to look like European or German architecture. A crowd packs the foreground, many people inspecting the various items on display in the stalls.A photo of a busy market stall, which is designed to look like European or German architecture. A crowd packs the foreground, many people inspecting the various items on display in the stalls.A photo of a busy market stall, which is designed to look like European or German architecture. A crowd packs the foreground, many people inspecting the various items on display in the stalls.A photo of a market stall showing almonds roasting and chocolate melting. It smells divine here - all I could smell was hot chocolate though!A photo of a market stall showing almonds roasting and chocolate melting. It smells divine here - all I could smell was hot chocolate though!A photo of a wall showing a printed schedule for over a month of planned activities or events that will run during the illumination festival, right up to Christmas Day.A photo of a busy market stall, which is designed to look like European or German architecture. A crowd packs the foreground, many people inspecting the various items on display in the stalls.A photo of a busy market stall, which is designed to look like European or German architecture. A crowd packs the foreground, many people inspecting the various items on display in the stalls.

Odori Park’s illuminations:

A photo of a lighting installation spanning a snow-covered lawn in a park. Additional lighting installations are seen in the far background of the photo, showing that the park stretches on for a while and is full of light. Snow is falling, and makes the background seem darker while catching the light to make the scene close to the camera seem brighter.A photo of a lighting installation spanning a snow-covered lawn in a park. Additional lighting installations are seen in the far background of the photo, showing that the park stretches on for a while and is full of light. Snow is falling, and makes the background seem darker while catching the light to make the scene close to the camera seem brighter.A photo of a lighting installation spanning a snow-covered lawn in a park. Additional lighting installations are seen in the far background of the photo, showing that the park stretches on for a while and is full of light. Snow is falling, and makes the background seem darker while catching the light to make the scene close to the camera seem brighter.A photo of a lighting installation spanning a snow-covered lawn in a park. Additional lighting installations are seen in the far background of the photo, showing that the park stretches on for a while and is full of light.A photo of a lighting installation spanning a snow-covered lawn in a park. Additional lighting installations are seen in the far background of the photo, showing that the park stretches on for a while and is full of light.A photo of a lighting installation spanning a snow-covered lawn in a park. Additional lighting installations are seen in the far background of the photo, showing that the park stretches on for a while and is full of light.

Sapporo Station had some nice decor up for the winter, though I’m not sure if it’s strictly part of the White Illumination. I remember these from my January 2024 trip, they may just be around the whole time? Either way, pretty stuff as well:

A photo of an ornate blue lighting installation - an archway - framing the walkway to yellow lighting installation.A photo of an ornate blue lighting installation - an archway - framing the walkway to yellow lighting installation.A photo of an ornate blue lighting installation - an archway - framing the walkway to yellow lighting installation.A photo of a bubble or dome covering a series of garden planter boxes, containing real and fake plants. The fake plants are lights!

Really, snow would make Vivid Sydney so much more amazing. White Illumination was only a few city blocks long, not spread across the whole city, but felt way more interesting and condensed and just overall nicer than what I’ve seen from Vivid Sydney in recent years. Really glad I was in Sapporo for the right time to see this!

A photo of a lighting installation in a park, with a series of additional lighting installations continuing across the park to the horizon. The Sapporo TV Tower pokes up from the horizon, and is also lit up.

And all of this - I loved it, even with snow landing in my beard throughout the night - not enough snow to cover the ground, but enough to make for a funny selfie or two:

A photo of me! I'm wearing a big windbreaker jacket with a giant fluffy hood, standing in front of a bright lighting installation in a park. Snow is in my long red beard.A photo of me! I'm wearing a big windbreaker jacket with a giant fluffy hood, standing in front of a bright lighting installation in a park. Snow is in my long red beard.

My night out at the White Illumination was real nice, and I ended up with a craving for a burger. So I found a “Bearfoot Bar” on the walk back to the hotel - and had to laugh. They were playing women’s AFL on the bar TVs! Travelled all the way to the Japanese equivalent of Tasmania, I suppose the Australian stuff would pop up as well!

A photo of a TV screen displaying a women's Australian Football League game, mounted to the ceiling above a Japanese bar.

Exploring Sapporo

During this first week in Sapporo, I spent a few days just walking around the city. It’s a great place to walk - very flat, until you go towards the obvious mountains like Mount Moiwa to the west of the city. I was planning to head out that way next week, but for now I focused on walking around the central and eastern parts of Sapporo.

I found a Shinto shrine for fortune and love:

A photo of an entrance to a temple grounds, with a large stone torii gate framing the walkway to the temple offering building. The temple offering building has a red staircase leading to its offering box, which is sheltered by white banners and angled roofing.A photo of a carved stone lion on a pedestal - a guardian of a temple.

I found a Buddhist temple and indoor graveyard. It looked like a regular building from most sides of its exterior, but had nice little bits of detail like carvings in some corners, and a historic temple bell - the bell being the only original part of the temple remaining from over a century ago!

A photo of an ornate wooden or aged metal carving of a lion amongst clouds, that rests on a top corner of a temple building.A photo of a temple bell on the corner of the temple's block of land. Carparks and apartment buildings surround the space.

Visiting both a Shinto place and a Buddhist place one after the other kinda made me realise that I’m more interested in the Shinto stuff than the general Buddhist stuff. I’m much more interested in mythologies and religions that are more like “religion for respecting the land and country’s sake”.

Shinto is much more like Australian Aboriginal “Dreaming” than like any other religion - tales based on the land, to live better amongst the land, and that interests me waaaaaaaaaaay more!

I mean, don’t get me wrong: I liked both of the above places. I just like one type of place more than the other.

Later, I found a fish market or seafood street - though you can see the locals go off to the side of the main street to get their food!

A photo of a table of fresh raw seafood ready for purchase.A photo of a street lined with shops, and the street is packed full of pedestrians.A photo of a table of fresh raw seafood ready for purchase.A photo of an old-fashioned Japanese building with a seafood market on one side, and a queue of customers on the opposite side of the building.

And walking across the great spans across the rivers, with the Sapporo TV Tower in sight:

A photo of a pedestrian bridge and road that spans a river, with the Sapporo TV Tower in the background.A photo of a pedestrian bridge and park that spans a river.

And finding one of the covered shopping streets near the hotel, in the southern part of Sapporo, with great restaurants under it and under its surrounding buildings:

A photo of a covered shopping street stretching as far as the eye can see.A photo of a meal of a juicy-looking double cheeseburger and salted potato chunks. Not wedges, chunks!
A photo of a restaurant menu for a place named 'Brisk Stand', featuring tantalizing burgers.A photo of a fancy green wall art piece, displaying what looks like grass and technology intertwined on the wall.

The ability to just take my time and wander around was really nice. I know some people who have rushed around tourist spot to tourist spot in a whirlwind tour of Japan, and every story they tell of their trip is tained with complaints and whining - I wanted to make sure I had a good chunk of time away to soak up the good of the places I visited, and I’m happy with what I’ve done in that regard!

Miscellaneous Oddities

During this week, I put up the lil magnetized door sign that says “yep, you can clean this room” on my hotel room door while I went out to the shops. I came back just after lunch and saw this on the hotel room TV:

A photo of a TV screen displaying a grid relating hotel room numbers to a cleaning task status code.

A cleaning management process! Task-tracking for a specific task! A system!

I love systems! I love figuring out how existing systems work, I love designing new or modified systems, I love it all. So this random lil TV screen got my brain buzzing.

  • Different “A” status codes represent the room’s need for cleaning, e.g. “room is empty, no need to clean”, “room has someone in it and it’s been days since the last clean, it should be cleaned today”,
  • Different “B” status codes represent the room’s cleaning task status, e.g. “cleaning pending”, “in progress”, “awaiting inspection”
  • The whole thing is an app in the TV, a nice user interface with data managed on a centralised server. It has to be optimised for low-processing-power devices (locked-down smart TVs) and made for inputs from a specific type of controller (a TV remote, more in common with a gaming console controller than a mouse and keyboard!).

It was so tempting to just take a day to sit in the hotel room and code up my own version of this. I could do it. I have the skills! It’d be a cool portfolio piece! …but that didn’t feel like a good use of holiday time.

Same goes for coding up my own elevator software - the logic involved in figuring out which floor to go to next, which elevator runs or not, etc etc - I could totally do that, and whole games are built around that sort of thing already! But I have other things to do with my time! 😅

Systems fascinate me, I love it!

The Next Part

Week 1 of Sapporo is done, week 2 of Sapporo is up next! A bit less shopping, a lot more nature and walking around. Let’s see if it’ll actually snow again before I have to return to Australia…

A photo of a crow amongst autumn trees.