The closest major city to the Niseko area is awash with great restaurants in all price ranges, quirky boutiques fashion stores, more hairdressers, cosmetics stores and cake/dessert shops than you can poke a stick at, and just about everything you could find in Tokyo minus the thousands of tourists.
Summer is a great time to visit but if you are in Hokkaido in February, then the Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival) is an absolute must.
Cheap Eats: Nuts Cafe Trip is a great cafe, not too far from the JR station. The website link is in Japanese but you can see the pictures and see that the food looks great and it is cheap, sometimes as little as 500yen for a lunch set. It is hard to beat that price so it is naturally very popular.
Exceptional Chinese: Yinzu was introduced to us by our friend Yoichi from the famed Kamimura restaurant in Niseko. After a wine tasting event in Sapporo last summer, we joined some sommeliers from Village Cellars, Mick Nippard (formerly of Sekka, now running AWines) and some of Yoichi’s friends for an amazing Chinese dinner.
Drink: Sapporo has so many bars and izakaya’s that it is hard to pin down a favourite but I have to say that were lucky to be in Sapporo in August of 2007 (possibly for the first time) and visited the Cross Hotel, just after it had opened. The bar is very modern, clean lines throughout and the perfect place to sit down, enjoy a cocktail or a beer, meet some friends or associates and enjoy the views below of the street.
Coffee: With quite a few stores in Sapporo, Miyakoshiya is a fine example of what good coffee can taste like in Japan. I really like the shop in Mitsukoshi Department store on the 3rd floor. It overlooks Ekimae-dori and is a great place to relax and enjoy a good coffee. You can buy the beans directly from the store (like most coffee stores in Japan) or you can buy it in Co-op or MaxValu in Kutchan. There is a great story behind the company yet as it has grown, there has always been a constant company demand…to make excellent coffee.
Cheese: We only recently discovered Cheese Please in Poletown, the underground mall running below Ekimae-dori, when Mick from AWines pointed us in the right direction to find really amazing Hokkaido Cheese. This little store has such variety from many amazing boutique fromageries all over Hokkaido that the standard ‘Hokkaido Camembert’ or ‘Brie’ are no longer acceptable at a dinner party in Hirafu.
Shop: A personal favourite of both Tess and myself is Marithe + Francois Girbaud (or MFG) in Stellar Place, Centre L4. The collection is always funky and fashionable, amazing quality and well priced in Japan when compared to the same pieces in Europe. There are stores in all the major cities in Japan and you can find locations on the web-link above.
Event: Not much needs to be said about the Yuki Matsuri. It is the biggest and most famous event in Sapporo and brings people from all over the world each year. Other event that are notable are the Tour de Hokkaido cycling classic from the 9th September to the 13th September and the Sapporo Beer Festival, a month long festival in Odori Park usually beginning in late July where all the major beer companies construct areas to sample their beer and new gimmicks.
Sapporo is a great city with an amazing climate in summer, much more bearable than in cities like Tokyo, Nagoya or Osaka. Maximum temperatures of around 30.c make this city a great city to walk around and with a grid design, it is easy to navigate visiting the many sights and shops.
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