June 5th. the last day in Sapporo was jam packed with action. we (again) got up early and headed to Maruyama Zoo (円山動物園).
it was fairly fun, the walk from the station was nice, the zoo itself was fine, a little sad... a lot of solo animals and all the elephants had died. i did see my 1st タヌキ (raccoon dog)
and some other stuff.
bad combo...
after zooing out, we grabbed a cab (because it was raining) and went over to the white lover factory (白い恋人).
Shiroi koibito is a very famous treat from Hokkaido and it's basically a little sandwich cookie with white (or milk) chocolate. pretty decent, but the factory is set up a bit like a little theme park,
no rides, but a kind of animated display about the process of making chocolate and (for some reason) a toy museum with pictures of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa...
after the little self guided tour of the factory we went over to the office to have our picture taken for our own box of white lovers
(gotta be one of the all time top 10 worst pics of me) and while we waited the 40mins it takes to personalize the tin, we went across the street to a place called Owl's. (click the pic to see it better)
Owl's is rad! i highly recommend it if you go to Sapporo. it's named so because the J league team that reps Sapporo (コンサドーレ札幌) has an owl on its team crest. the reason that's important is that the restaurant looks out over Consadole's practice field, kinda where you would expect a press box to be. it's really, really cool! although the team wasn't practicing that day, and the food was just a'ight (i had teriyaki tacos) the location is off the charts! I'd freakin love it if Frontale had something like that!
after lunch, we went back to the factory in an absolute downpour! got our tin of cookies and then bellied up to a cake buffet that mornin was all about!
pretty good i must say
after we had our cake and ate it too, the weather had turned beautiful so we took a couple shots amongst the flowers:
we stopped off at the little clock tower (時計台) in town. fairly unimpressive, but historical i guess.
to round out Sapporo, for dinner, we dined at the Kirin beer garden near our hotel where i had crabs!
actually, just parts of one crab... also, feeling pretty bad, i could only muster up about 4 beers :(
Sorry about not getting these posts up earlier, just been real busy lately. Work has been busy and home has been busy as mornin and I were looking for a new place and are now getting ready to move... also MJ's death took a toll on me... not sure if I'll be able to put up the last 2 days of the Hokkaido vacation before I move, but I might. If not, they'll be up sometime shortly after moving day, July 2nd! More info on the move after i finish the Hokkaido posts. later,
and some other stuff.
bad combo...
Shiroi koibito is a very famous treat from Hokkaido and it's basically a little sandwich cookie with white (or milk) chocolate. pretty decent, but the factory is set up a bit like a little theme park,
no rides, but a kind of animated display about the process of making chocolate and (for some reason) a toy museum with pictures of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa...
after the little self guided tour of the factory we went over to the office to have our picture taken for our own box of white lovers 
(gotta be one of the all time top 10 worst pics of me) and while we waited the 40mins it takes to personalize the tin, we went across the street to a place called Owl's. (click the pic to see it better)
Owl's is rad! i highly recommend it if you go to Sapporo. it's named so because the J league team that reps Sapporo (コンサドーレ札幌) has an owl on its team crest. the reason that's important is that the restaurant looks out over Consadole's practice field, kinda where you would expect a press box to be. it's really, really cool! although the team wasn't practicing that day, and the food was just a'ight (i had teriyaki tacos) the location is off the charts! I'd freakin love it if Frontale had something like that!
pretty good i must say
got up early again and headed to sheep hill observatory (羊ヶ丘展望台) to see some sheep, 
and then eat them...
also saw the famous statue of professor Clark, famous for the quote 'boys be ambitious'.
took some print club (プリクラ) pictures, went all up in it,
and then strolled through Odori park (大通公園), took a ride on the Ferris wheel (観覧車)
and had a cheese packed dinner at Cheese Cheese. 
we could draw on the table!
one of them is only available in Hokkaido, and one of them was only available at the beer garden, the were both pretty good. they also have a museum that was pretty cool and informative, but the cool part was the old style red brick buildings, signature of the frontier days of Hokkaido.
after the beer garden we made our way to the Sapporo dome (札幌ドーム) super early to check out the place and get in line.
we ended up with pretty good seats (2nd row) and Sapporo dome was pretty decent, wide aisles! but the selection of Carp goods was limited... i couldn't get the road jersey i wanted :( probably gonna have to wait until September.
The game was really good, a little back and forth action leading to a 2-2 tie until Brown decided to take Lewis out of the game and our reliever promptly let up 5 runs in the 8th...
since i got back from Hokkaido (北海道) first, i bought a PS3 and some games; killzone 2, Afrika, みんなのGOLF5, and ボクの夏休み3. those have taken up some of my time, but the updates and downloads have taken up more (it took around 4.5 hours to download the online golf updates!), PSN sucks! also mornin and i have been looking for an apartment, it's time to move. melvis is apparently looking to move too. enough about that, lets get to why we are here, the Hokkaido trip!
we had time to get a massage before our flight too!
10min for 200円! not bad.
when you arrive in Sapporo at new Chitose airport (新千歳空港) you realize that you are far from Sapporo! gotta take a train into town and by the time we made it to our hotel near Nakajima park station (中島公園駅) it was nearly 11pm. there were no eateries available around the hotel so we hoofed it to one of Sapporo's most famous districts, Susukino (すすき野). basically the Ginza or Shinjuku of Sapporo. we ended up on a ramen street (ラーメンの横丁) and had to wait a bit to get inside a place called toraya (とらや). it was bitchin!
that was about it for the day.
