OnigiriGirl: Day 32: Start of the Sapporo Trip!

Breakfast:

Awesome breakfast-dessert:

Heading to Sapporo!:

I got this little charm of a bunny on a piece of dango out of a capsule machine at one of the rest stops. I really like it.

More scenery pictures:

At another rest stop there was a little produce shop and I got this hair bow, and some bean-paste-filled mochi balls for lunch. This was a bad idea because the taste of bean-paste-filled mochi balls gets old kind of fast, but we only had so much time at the rest stop and I couldn't find normal food, so I panicked and grabbed the mocha balls which looked pretty lunch-worthy next to all the daikon radishes and onions.

It's hard to tell from the picture, but the door to our room at the hostel was weirdly low. The number on the door was easily below my eye-level.

For either a really late actual-food lunch or a really early dinner a bunch of us went out to find food and ended up eating at a really yummy okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki is kind of like a meat and veggie filled Japanese pancake with okonomiyaki sauce, fish flakes (bonito flakes) and mayonnaise on top. I got one topped with green onions and an egg. They were cooked before they were brought to our table, but the grill in the middle kept them hot.

Fun language side note: I think it's interesting that in English you have "onions" and "green onions," while in Japanese you have "ねぎ（葱）" (negi = onion = green onion in English) and "玉ねぎ（玉葱）" (tama-negi = round onion = onion in English). In other words, the two languages have a different "default onion" and the word for the other onion is modified by "green" or "round" to describe the other, non-default onion.

Here is the restaurant:

Later, we went to the FamilyMart across the street from the hostel and got ice cream and popsicles. because it was really hot. (I unfortunately thought Sapporo would be cooler than Hakodate because it is farther north without taking into account that Hakodate is basically a tiny peninsula on a much larger peninsula and didn't bring many cool-weather clothing items.)
I got this soda flavored popsicle which was really refreshing. I liked it a lot.

After that, our group split up and Mary, Alison, and I went to a few different parks.
Here is Hokkaido's former government office building:

It was in a small square park that we were originally just going to walk through, but it had some really pretty ponds so we stuck around for a while and took pictures.

I really like taking/looking at pictures that contrast natural and urban settings, and in Japan there are TONS of spots like this.

Lots of park pictures:

Water lilies are so pretty:

There were turtles!

I like this sign:

More contrast!

Outside the park we passed some sort of car show:

We crossed a bridge over a street:

We could see Sapporo tower really well from the bridge:

This magical-looking building is a tiny church:

Sapporo tower:

There are lots of towers like this in Japan and many of them have their own character:

This one is Sapporo tower:

The elevator was really cool:

We didn't go all the way up to the viewing deck, but here's the view from the third floor (which was as far as we could go for free):

We took pictures in a Purikura both in the tower. I'm pretty sure I took a picture of it, but I can't seem to find the picture at the moment.

I like the wording of this fire warning:

Another pretty tower picture:

Bitter green tea I got earlier from the convenience store:

After Sapporo Tower we went to 大通公園 (odori koen = Odori Park = big + pass through + park) which is a long, narrow, strip of park that runs across most of the city.
Various places along the strip of park:

After that, we went to a more shopping center-y area:

We stopped at this bakery:

We didn't stop here, but I liked the name:

It isn't, but it sounds like it's supposed to be a bad Cheesecake Factory rip-off.

The shopping centers here are huge. Here is just one of many malls in the area:

The underground strip mall:

We stopped at this sock shop and I got some cool nylons. I know there are really awesome nylons sold in Japan with really cool patterns and tattoos etc. and I want to find some before I go, but there weren't any here that were too crazy.
Note: Tattoos aren't very common here are generally associated with members of the yakuza (the Japanese mafia). You generally aren't even allowed to enter public baths if you have a tattoo. This view of tattoos is one reason I've heard behind the tattooed nylons. Instead of getting a tattoo on your leg, you can just get a pair of nylons that make it look like you have one.

We also went to a Book Off and I got a whole bunch of books off the 100 yen shelves similar to the ones I got when I went with Tegan. After that, we went to a huge five story Daiso which was really great, but we got there just before it closed so we only browsed up to the fourth floor. They had SO much great stuff. I really wish Dollar Tree were that high quality. I ended up getting some sodas for later.

Above ground shopping arcade:

We went into a few claw-machine arcades:

Mary quickly won a shiba-inu stuffed animal for her brother.

Alison kept trying to get this hamster:

Eventually, after a pretty long time, some Japanese girls that had been chatting behind us came over and tried to explain that you had to push the button a second time to get the claw to close right. We didn't really get what they were saying, so one of the girls showed us using one of Alison's remaining attempts and won it for her on the first try. We were all super impressed.

I spent a little too much trying to win this shiba-inu but didn't get it in the end. I think I'm going to go back to never playing claw games.