Continuing on from week three, we continue exploring Sapporo for the final week of the holiday.

Cinema!

So, “Predator: Badlands” came out in cinemas this month and I’ve been hanging out to see it. Wasn’t sure which cinema to go to in Tokyo for this, so when I had a relatively-free day in Sapporo, I looked around for cinemas and booked a ticket.

The system for getting tickets online at Japanese movie theatres is a bit different to an Australian movie theatre…

• The schedule comes out on a Thursday or Friday night a week or two before the session (I can’t remember exactly, but it’s not too far off Australian ways yet)
• The ability to book a ticket for a scheduled movie session only unlocks 48 hours or 2 days before the scheduled session. This is very different to Australian cinema booking - if the schedule is up, you can book! Not so, for Japan.
• The movie schedule contains - at least for Sapporo Cinema Frontier - many more reruns or special one-off sessions than new releases. The variety is pretty great - this seemed better than what Event Cinemas typically runs here in Sydney.
• After booking your chosen movie session, you get given a QR code to go and scan at a ticket redemption machine at the cinema. No digital tickets or phone app tickets - gotta get some paper to enter the cinema on the day of your session!

It was a bit to learn, but all doable in the end.

The most exciting part though: the cinema had a merch store! You could buy movie memorabillia! I spent more on merch than I did on my movie ticket, and the movie ticket was $20AUD for a basic screening session. Australian cinemas need to sell merch!

There were numerous product stands for various animated and anime movies, and a few displays for other movies as well. Merch varies per movie, that makes sense.

For “Predator: Badlands”, they were selling tie-in or prequel comic books or graphic novel omnibuses. Epic stuff.

And for almost all movies, they were selling movie “guides” or “programmes” - I’m not sure what to call them. The one I bought for “Predator: Badlands” contained behind-the-scenes interviews, movie photography, and was printed like the type of booklet you’d get from a orchestra or symphony event (niche, but the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular’s booklet is the only similar thing I’ve seen).

This was so cool - I bought one for the Predator movie for me, and one for a Gundam movie for my dad. And some anime merch for a friend!

Fushimi Inari Shrine and Mount Moiwa

This was a pretty place, but a disappointing shrine. I set my own expectations too high, after visiting other shrines…

The shrine has a nice path lined with torii gates:

And it leads up and up and up to a quaint little temple. The temple is surrounded by homes, and when I visited - was littered with junk like a pogostick, a hair clip, half a kids-sized bubble blower, and so on. Seems like a very lived-in area, where the shrine is used more like a park than a temple.

Still, while I was at the shrine, people were coming and going - paying their respects, taking photos amongst the architecture, and so on. Just a handful of people - it was a nice and quiet place.

The shrine has a website, as most actively-maintained shrines or temples do. On that website, they showed awesome intricate goshuin and a very special goshuin-cho:

I was hoping to get the goshuin as per usual, but also find that goshuin-cho! A Pikachu-esque fox spirit! Super cute!

Since no one was around, I wandered around a bit and eventually left to explore the nearby suburb. It had nice views as it was up a slope compared to the rest of Sapporo.

I had planned to go up the cablecar and see the city from the observation deck at the top of Mount Moiwa, but walking around the Fushimi Inari Shrine made me realise that the mountain is kinda… silly. It’s really close to the city, yet a hassle to get to compared to other epic vantage points like the Sapporo Tower 38 or even the Sapporo TV Tower - both places that I’m planning to go up soon anyway.

Maruyama Park and Hokkaido Jingu

I spent a day with the goal of exploring a temple - a great big temple! Hokkaido Jingu is the largest temple in Hokkaido, and was recommended to me by my local friend I met via Pokemon Go (more on him later). As it turns out, it’s surrounded by plenty of stuff for a nice day out - a park, a zoo, a nice quieter range of shops and restaurants, and so on. It’s really nice!

The walk to this temple should be long, though you can drive right up to it. Essentially, this is the largest temple in Hokkaido - and has giant torii gates to match its size. The torii gates begin in the nearby suburbs, not the temple grounds, so you should walk a bit through the neighbourhood to reach the temple properly and respectfully!

I started halfway between the “Number 1 Torii Gate” and “Number 2 Torii Gate” of the temple - on the edge of the suburbs and Maruyama Park. The park provides a good way to get your bearings: signage!

After a nice brief walk through a park, the “Number 2 Torii Gate” becomes visible. It’s right on the edge of the main street and the park, with a taxi bay right in front of the gate. Nothing blocking a nicely photogenic view, at least:

And from that gate, it’s still a 5 minute walk to reach the temple buildings!

The temple grounds are nicely spaced out. There’s a shop for temple charms and the like near its entrance, and the main offering building is the most-prominent thing you’ll see when entering the main grounds.

However, the goshuin office was hidden away! In a far corner of the grounds, there’s this building…

It contains the goshuin office, and a surprisingly church-like hall. No other temple I visited in this trip or last year’s trip had a space with modern and sleek seating like this, it was a nice sight to see. Makes the temple feel more-actively-used than all others I’ve visited!

After getting a goshuin, I walked out of the temple grounds and found another map sign. Clearer pathways to the nearby things! The zoo isn’t far at all, so I started heading there.

The path to the zoo was through a nice bit of forest, dotted with another smaller shrine as well as a wooden boardwalk over the forest river. And apparently, a risk of bear sightings!

The small shrine along the way was real nice to visit - spirit statues given some nice winter gear while they keep at their tasks.

I avoided the river boardwalk because of mild paranoia about how hard it’d be to get up from water level to the nearby zoo’s entrance. The map didn’t make it clear if the boardwalk actually connected to the zoo’s entrance! But after walking along the road up the mountain to the zoo, and reaching the entrance to the zoo, I could see clearly: the boardwalk had its own little staircase up to the zoo as well! Could’ve had a nice boardwalk passage to the zoo - maybe next time? 🤣

Maruyama Zoo

I was looking forward to this zoo - I loved Australia Zoo, Taronga Zoo, and even places like Sea World and Underwater World back in Australia. Seeing animals in nice spaces has always been great! And this zoo was conveniently right next to Hokkaido Jingu, so you can visit both places in a single day.

But… this was a sad place. I’ve specifically grown up near Australia Zoo, I’ve seen how animals should be cared for in a zoo environment. Japanese zoos just can’t match that… The animals have no space!

In case the photos don’t make it obvious: the enclosure visible in the photo is the entire enclosure for that animal. Not much space for these creatures!

There were red pandas spread across some partitioned enclosures - but they all seemed troubled. One was pacing around its enclosure while others were eating:

The thing that really stung with these sad sights was that the zoo itself was very spacious! I think I spent more time walking between exhibits than actually going through or observing the exhibits.

The polar bear exhibit - one I was really looking forward to since I hadn’t seen a polar bear before - was nice and spacious. But either the bear was hidden and sleeping, or just outright not in its public enclosure. Couldn’t find it. This was disappointing.

On the plus side, at least the chimpanzee enclosure seemed on par with Taronga Zoo’s chimpanzee enclosure.

And a snow leopard enclosure - while still kinda small - seemed really well-designed. Spot the cat!

The walk I took to get to this enclosure had me going around the back, behind the rocks - so I can confirm the cats are up there on those rocks. Really cool to see animal camouflage in action, in person!

But most-heartbreaking of all was the “praire animals” enclosure. Specifically, the kangaroo section:

This was just… sad. I grew up in Pelican Waters, right on the bottom of Caloundra in Queensland, Australia. We had a family of kangaroos roam in the fields behind the newest-developed blocks of land - a huge stretch of space for them. I know these animals need space and get uncomfortable when cramped in a small space - and Australian zoos handle this a lot better than this Japanese zoo did. This kangaroo enclosure was upsetting.

Still, I got some nice keyrings and animal plushies as merch from the zoo - good gifts and mementos, even if the zoo was mediocre overall. And what’s weird is that it felt okay while there - nice staff, nice atmosphere, nice facilities for people. But the more I think about the animals and the more I look at those photos…

As an Australian, I wouldn’t recommend this zoo to anyone who has visited any Australian zoo. You’ll just get sad here.

More Pokemon Center Merch!

Pikachu building Pokemon-shaped snowmen!

This was a new product line launched during my last week in Sapporo, and it launched a few days after a new trading card game expansion set released. I visited the Pokemon Center for both product launches - and wow, everybody loves the plushies way more than trading cards! This was the busiest I had seen the store ever:

All worth it for some special plushies:

And as a fun note: these snowmen plushies were all sold out just 5 days later! Everyone REALLY loves them!

The Floette plush from Pokemon Legends: Z-A was still in stock and not new, I just knew that I’d never find that again so I bought it while grabbing the new plushies!

The Pokemon Centers also typically gives additional items to promote other things going on - a Slowpoke sticker for a Slowpoke kids event happening a few days later, and a Pokemon Pokopia sticker to celebrate preorders opening for that upcoming Pokemon spin-off game. Real cute, fun stuff!

Sapporo Tower 38

Revisiting a tourist destination from my last trip, but with more energy and a nicer camera this time. On my last trip, I missed an infamous tourist spot within this tower - I had to go and take a photo to prove to some friends that I did definitely visit it this time:

A loo with a view. It’s silly, I know. But the views from the toilets are definitely really nice at night!

And a surprise to me: the tower was doing Christmas-themed items at its cafe! Their Christmas Parfait was layers upon layers of different types of desserts: icecreams (blackcurrant and chocolate), strawberries, chocolate chips, fudge chunks, biscuit chunks, chocolate mousse, and so on. Well worth the $15AUD!

This Christmas parfait has introduced me to a new top-tier icecream flavour: blackcurrant.

Imagine if Ribena was an icecream. It’s so nice.

And the view from up above the city at night - I love these tower views. Japan’s idea of a city stretches on so much further than an Australian city. I love these views!

And this is just Sapporo! Not a mega-city like Tokyo, or an extra-large city like Osaka - this is like the Tasmania of Japan! And it’s huge!

Shiroi Kobito - A Chocolate Theme Park

I attempted to go to Otaru, but an earthquake and strict train track inspection protocols said no. So I went to a chocolate theme park instead!

This place was cool - themed, and had both a free area and a paid park tour area. The paid area seemed more like a kids activity thing, so I skipped that and focused on the cafes, gift shop, and free sights of the space. There was a lot to get through even with that limited experience as the goal!

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They had really nice ice creams - all things chocolate were extra-amazing here. And while I didn’t try it, they had this really pretty matcha icecream styled to look like a Christmas tree:

The gift shop had this really fancy foyer:

And some very interesting items in the shop:

Fruit-and-milk jam, and a set of chocolates stored in a book!

The park’s theme is underscored by two kami - spirits enshrined in the park. The spirits took the form of cats, and were famed for causing mischief in the area. So, many of the park’s merch is themed around cats - perfect for any cat-lover, with big purple cat plushies, cat-shaped paper clips, cat-shaped chocolates, and so on. All real fun stuff!

After a wander around and shop around through the chocolate theme park, I left to find a nearby shrine - one with supposedly good views of surrounding suburbs. The park itself had a good view of the mountains, with fog lifting above the suburbs as the day wore on:

Kamiteine Shrine

A quiet shrine with a great view. It was a bit of a walk, especially the stairs to reach the shrine grounds:

But this was a beautiful and quiet space. The kami enshrined here are all about protection and nature, with the idea of watching over the people nearby.

It had multiple sets of guardian dogs or lions, with the most-recent set donated in 2006:

And nice grounds with a lovely view:

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This was a nice day out, but ended up rushing back to the hotel in a taxi to avoid the looming rain. Freezing rain wasn’t going to be fun!

Catching Up With A Local Friend

Many years ago, when Pokemon Go first introduced “remote raids”, I and many others started looking online for raid-organising apps. People across the world could automatically and quickly find raids for rare Pokemon and join in, even if their local suburb had nothing happening in Pokemon Go. It was great! After getting a shiny legendary from one of these raids, I posted about it on social media and wondered: would the players I just played with also be on social media? Would they be using their in-game names on social networks?

One man did, and I reached out to him. Since then, we’ve been occasionally messaging each other - usually about Pokemon-related things - but as it turned out, he lives in Sapporo! I could meet him on my holidays out here!

I wasn’t sure if I’d have time to meet him on this trip and wasn’t sure if I was too tired to have left a good impression from my first visit to Sapporo for him to want to meet up again, so I didn’t tell him about my trip… But I sent him an in-game gift, a souvenir from a “PokeStop” that lets the recipient receive a bundle of items. A gift reveals the location of the PokeStop that it’s based on - so when I sent a Sapporo-based gift to my Sapporo-based friend, he reached out to me and wanted to hang out again!

By the time we coordinated and communicated, the only day left to hang out was the 2nd of December - the day before I fly home!

It was going to be chilly and dark, limiting what we could do together.

But we figure it out: there’s an event on in Sapporo! And a nice tourist spot to check out!

So, we organised to meet at the Sapporo TV Tower, right next to Odori Park. We were going to go up the tower - something that he, a local, had never done before - to admire its views.

After that, we went down into the White Illumination and German Market in Odori Park for dinner.

It was a really nice couple of hours together, I’m really glad we met up again. And I’m keen to meet him again on my next trip too!

Winter Is The Flu Season, Everywhere

I made it so long without getting sick, but just as the trip reaches its end… I catch a cold. With every place I visited featuring sounds of coughing by this point in the trip, I kinda knew it was coming. Heck, as I sit here on the 8th of December - a full 4 days after landing back in Sydney - I’m still facing fevers, sore throats, headaches, and all that jazz. It’s rough. Australian flu season never hit me this hard!

Returning Home

I won’t do a separate post for “departure”, like how I did one for just the arrival for this holiday - business class is business class!

There was a brief worry of snow impacting my flights - ANA sent out a snow advisory warning on the morning of my departure day. My flight from Sapporo to Tokyo was scheduled for 7pm, and all flights after 6pm were expected to be delayed by snow. With just 90 minutes of a “layover” in Tokyo before my flight back to Sydney, that felt risky - but it was simple enough to change my Sapporo-Tokyo flight to an earlier one to avoid delays!

This flight change meant I could spend more time in the ANA lounge at Haneda Airport as well - it’s a nice lounge, very spacious, with great snacks and an udon noodle chef standing by as well.

But most amazingly of all:

• At Sapporo’s New Chitose Airport, the Pokemon Store was before the baggage drop. So I could buy some airport-themed Pokemon merch and stuff it into my suitcases, keeping my carry-on backpack not-so-full! Each airport has its own specific plushies!
• At Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, a new Pokemon merch vending machine has been installed near gate 69 (nice) of terminal 2. So right before I walked on to my plane, I could get more airport-themed Pokemon merch!

I got some airport-themed Pokemon merch in my January 2024 trip, but only one plushie per location - a pilot Pikachu wearing a badge of each airport. This time, I could get the flight attendant Pikachus from each airport. And even a new pilot Pikachu straddling an airplane!

Business class made the overnight flight much nicer, but it was still a bit of a struggle to sleep. I had some movies playing for the entire 9 hour flight, and slept through just one of them - it was a bit rough. I could at least put my feet up and recline comfortably though, it was great!

And breakfast on the plane - eggs benedict here was phenomenal.

Overall, this was a fantastic holiday. I’m keen to go back to Japan, and also visit other countries during their snow seasons - and hopefully rent out an apartment or house the next time I do one of these longer holidays!