Today's blog is gonna be a short one. Primarily because I am an eepy baby and partially because not a lot happened today.
We started off early, taking a van out to a local fish market area. The primary shop/restaurant, Kitano Gurume, has a dedicated transit option from many local hotels and the main Sapporo Station. You can ride to and from for free (about a 10min ride each way), so long as you spend at least 1000 yen in their store or restaurant. A bargain, honestly, because even though the bus that goes that way from the hotel is 500 yen (a little over $3), it takes three times as long. No thanks.
The restaurant had some of the freshest fish I've ever had, which means that it was mostly flavorless. Angie had a bowl of rice and about a half a dozen fresh cuts of fish on top (Angie: I even had the "mini size" with tuna, ikura, and uni (sea urchin). It was my first time eating sea urchin but it wasn't bad! I can't describe the taste, but it wasn't fishy at all. And I know people can say the texture can be gritty or sandy if not properly washed, but this was smooth and creamy!). I had some medium fattiness tuna and a very nice grilled cod (with a sweet miso glaze) (Angie: Jeff wins the prize for the best item at that meal. That grilled cod with the glaze was DELICOUS!!).
We then ambled around the area for an hour, seeing the sights and picking up omiage (that's Presents For People At Home, but as a single word - what convenience!). The sellers were all very friendly, including several who basically forced us to try their wares. Sorry to the nice woman who really, really wanted me to try the sea urchin. I'm good. I promise. (Angie: Don't tell our restaurant Kitano Gurume that the free samples we got was better; it had a flavorful, salty (but still not fishy) taste and the same creamy texture. The lady at the shop was really nice! I feel bad we couldn't buy anything from her since it would all need to be refrigerated or prepared right away.)
Upon our return, we relaxed in the room for a bit before heading back out for more shopping. We headed out to Susukino again, this time with purpose and Umas to Musume (and Kids to Stray). Our first stop, though, was a PC games shop to look for some very specific 1990s PC-98 games. The shop was quaint (which is me being generous - it was about 40 square feet and all of it was filled with the most ludicrous PC games imaginable). The older man running the place was mostly distracted with a few boxes of PC games that he'd (apparently) recently got into stock. (Angie: I think he was too embarrassed or shy to try and interact with foreigners, especially a female one.)
Up next, a walk over to Sushiro - a conveyor belt sushi chain that Angie had visited before. It was improbably medium. If you looked up 5/10 Sushi Restaurant chain in the dictionary, you'd see a note saying "Americans can't properly rate anything, because they think a 3/5 is awful and a 5/5 is okay - instead of rating nearly every place they go somewhere between a 2.5 and 3.5, because that's how statistical distribution should work.". Then, when you figure out that I'm just being ridiculous for the purpose of making a point, you'll be able to move on to the next point.
Sushiro was pretty okay. I've had better, I've definitely had worse. A definitional example of a 3/5 restaurant. (Angie: pssshhh, I still love Sushiro. The current limited edition grilled chicken sushi with the basil or mozzarella is freakin' delicious. It did seem that location was cutting corners and getting kinda lazy though. The rice was sad and falling apart and the candied imo were chilled like they had been stored in a fridge.)
A short stroll later and we found ourselves back at the Mandarake. At the Suruga-ya. At the Combination Mandarake / Suruga-ya. Angie found some more souvenirs. I thought about picking up a few rarer games, but decided against it because they would've required buying a JPN X-Box. Gross.
After an hour or so of shopping, we made our way over to Karaoke Kan. Two hours of Angie singing (and me developing new ways to use soundwaves to inconvenience my neighbors) later and we wandered back to the hotel to get some rest.
I am now going to turn over the remainder of this to Angie, as I am falling asleep and cannot in good conscience continue.
Angie: I'm just going to add that our return to Surugaya was to pick up Uma Musume and Stray Kids merch for people at home. It was a very omiyage/souvenirs for others kinda shopping day. I did buy the Paprika soundtrack at Tower Records that was in the PARCO building with Sushiro. We also stopped at a Taito Station and a GiGo to play some claw machines and lose some money that way, but we did win two keychains of tiny claw machine claws, and we did some purikura! And I bought that chibi Sebastian figure at Surugaya that I passed up last time but it was still on my mind.
Now we're back at the hotel and I just got out of a nice hot bath and we're ready to snooze. In fact, Jeff is already snoring. It's my time to join him. Good night! Tomorrow we leave Sapporo and take a quick flight to Sendai. Goodbye Hokkaido. Hello Tohoku!
No comments:
Post a Comment