Alvinology goes to Japan – Day 5 of 14

On the fifth day, we visited a fish market in the morning and then spend the whole evening touring event sites for the 60th Sapporo Snow Festival.

The market offers an array of fresh seafood products as well as processed products. We also popped by a fruits and vegetable market where we had a quick bento breakfast.

Thereafter, we went to look at a snow sculpturing competition and made snowmen, part of the programs for the Sapporo Snow Festival. Rachel had a lot of fun making snowmen. In fact, while all of us made one snowman each, Rachel made a second one to replace her first one as she was not satisfied with it’s appearance. As all these activities were outdoor, we were all freezing ourselves to death and did not stay there for too long. The cold damaged Rachel’s head and she kept pestering me with silly questions like whether it was possible to “make the snowmen come alive”.

We had pipping hot Hokkaido soup curry for lunch. This was one of the best meal we had in Japan. The restaurant is called Soup Curry Rasata – click here to visit their official website. You get to choose the degree of hotness for your soup curry, going from one to ten chilli. Mark took the nine chilli option, I chose three, Meiyen chose five and Rachel chose zero. In the end, we figured the average Singaporean can probably take the seven chilli option, being more accustomed to spicy food than the Japanese. All four of us were extremely hungry from the coldness in the morning and promptly emptied all our bowls in double quick time.

Although we were already very tired at this point, the four of us still dragged our feet to the shopping belt where we were at the previous night to check out the lighted ice sculptures. Although smaller in sizes, they were equally fascinating for us, having come from a 24-7 sweltering hot, tropical country where we only get to see snow when we travel abroad.

We had a sumptious dinner that night at the ramen street which we recce the previous night. We chose the restaurant that had the longest queue. It was a very small restaurant with only counter seats and can only accommodate six customers at any one time. We decided to split into groups of two so we can go in faster instead of waiting for a vacant row of four seats.Being the gentlemen we were, Mark and I let the ladies dine first. The ingrates took photos of us from the inside and slurped up their noodle while eyeing our pitiful, hungry expressions. When Mark and I got in, we devoured our ramen as if we haven’t eaten for weeks.

This was the longest and most tiring day throughout our entire Japan trip as we did the most walking on this day. In fact, my feet developed blisters that night and it continued to hurt for the rest of our trip. Then again, the experience of the 60th Sapporo Snow Festival was definitely worth it. 🙂

Watch out for my next entry on my sixth day in Japan – we will be leaving Hokkaido and heading to Yokohama and Tokyo. Meanwhile, you can read my previous entries if you haven’t already:

Day 1 – Kansai Airport, Hokkaido

Day 2 – Skiing, Otaru

Day 3 – Asahikawa, Asahiyama Zoo

Day 4 – Sledding, Shiroi Koibito, Crab Buffet

Day 5 – The 60th Sapporo Snow Festival

Day 6 – Staying with the Asai, Shōnan

Day 7 – Ueno, Tokyo

Day 8 – Shibuya and Akihabara, Tokyo

Day 9 – Ikeda, Osaka

Day 10 – Kobe

Day 11 – Kyoto

Day 12 – Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan and Dotonbori

Day 13 – Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge and Mt. Rokko

Day 14 – Return to Singapore

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