Winter In Sapporo(Part 4 )

Last day in Sapporo and we still did not feel we had shopped enough and ate enough haha...Already making plans to go back there in the near future.

We went around the underground shopping malls like Pole Town, aurora and of course the above ground departmental stores, 8 stories of shopping each such as Loft, Esta, Tokyu, Daimaru.

We also drop by Le Tao to get cakes for supper.

(Above) One of the cakes we bought from Le Tao for supper - Strawberry Black Forrest.

At JR Sapporo shopping mall, we passed ABC Cooking Studio which was crowded with many young pretty housewives there to learn finer aspects of cooking. They have a 1 hr cooking class menu to cater to different cooking interests from fine culinary to baking. An interesting concept. Gayle is seen posing below in front of the glass walled studio which allows you to watch the classes in action.

For lunch, we dropped by one of our haunts where they serve tempura udon at 390yen. The cheapest meal there is plain udon ith tempura crumbs at 290yen. They serve free iced green tea and plain water as with many other Japanese inns. There are many such similar food inns in the underground food malls there. You will need to purchase a ticket based on your dish from the ticketing machine and present the ticket to the waitresses and they will serve it to you.One thing though, all the buttons on the ticketing machine are in Japanese so you will need to refer to the window display or menus placed outside the inn and then correlate them to the characters on the buttons. Luckily, most shops have vending machines that also have pictures of the food item on it for easy reference and identification. It would be useful to have loose change for the ticketing machine.
(Above) My bowl of tempura prawn and vegetable udon with complmentary iced green tea. After the whole morning and afternoon of shopping, we went back to our hotel to unload our shopping and rest our feet before setting off in the evening to see the Sapporo White Illumination, an anual winter festival at Odori Park. Nights in Sapporo are quite cold so do keep yourself warm with scraves, gloves, and other warm clothing and gear. Along the way, we saw a horse drawn carriage, actually it was a double decker carriage. Gayle and myself felt sad for the poor horse which had to pull a double decker carriage of humans through a cold winter night. (Below) Gayle is posing at the junction where the horse carriage is behind in the background.

(Below) Gayle posing beside the lightbox sign designating the location of the Sapporo White Illumination festival.

(Above) When we arrived there at 5.32pm, the park wqas already crowded with many people, locals and tourists alike photographing the many lighted displays there, sponsored by different Japanese companies from Panasonic to Japan Airlines. The ground is a little splippery as the wet ground has frozen into a sheet of ice so we had to tread with care.

(Above) Us posing at two of the different light displays there. You can see I am covered from head to toe due to the very cold wind.(Above)In the background of Odori Park is the Sapporo TV tower, lighted with it's usual orange glow. Note that it is only 5.32pm in the evening and it is already very dark.

(Below) At a little past six in the evening, Sapporo TV tower lights up with blinking blue lights like a Christmas tree to complement the lighted displays at Odori Park.

(Above) We were treated to a live keyboard concert amongst the lighted displays at Odori Park by a very talented and pretty Japanese lady sitting in a Yamaha sponsored glass booth who played Christmas favourites on her digital piano to an appreciative audience.

(Above) Us taking a couple shot at the Sapporo WHite Illumination arch, a much sought after photo opportunity there. We queued up like many couples there, locals and tourists alike and it was very nice and civil, each couple in the line helped the ones before them to take the shot. You can see the sheet of ice we are standing on. A number of couples slipped and fell to much laughter. I nearly slipped too. It was a nice winter ending to our last night in Sapporo and we went back with many nice memories to our hotel to rest for our trip to Tokyo the next day.