It’s been a bit hectic lately, with moving out of my apartment, but everything is finally settled down. To give myself a break, and celebrate the end of my year here, I decided to take a trip, this time to Sapporo, on Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. I haven’t traveled as much as I had initially hoped, so between Hokkaido and Kyushu, going north to Hokkaido will also give me a break from the summer heat.

While I was able to go to some interesting places on my trip, I would say it was more defined by taking it easy, drinking, and eating, and boy does Sapporo have the drinking and eating covered. Even in Osaka, one of the cities in Japan known for its eating culture, people will start telling you about all the delicious Sapporo food when you say you are going. Some of the highlights are Miso Ramen, ‘Genghis Khan’ (A lamb dish), Soup Curry, and fresh seafood, all of which was amazing. They are also famous for potatoes and doing most of the dairy production in Japan. And if you weren’t aware of the name, its also home to one of the largest beer companies in Japan, named after the city itself.

While I didn’t end up touring the brewery itself, I did head down to the Sapporo Beer Museum to learn about the history of Sapporo Beer, which is about as old as the city itself. I ended up taking the premium tour, with the tour guide who spoke just a little bit to fast for me to understand completely, but it was only 500 yen (~$5), and there was some beer and snacks at the end. Our guide even demonstrated the proper way to pour, which was pretty interesting.

Though the weather was certainly cooler, it was unseasonably rainy, cloudy, and even a bit humid. This usually isn’t the case, but at least we didn’t have it as bad as the rest of Japan, which had to deal with a disastrous typhoon directly. While the forecast actually had a lot of rain, most of the days were just cloudy, so it wasn’t as bad as I had feared when I arrived.

I was staying at a ‘Guest House’ at the edge of Odori park, kind of a central park of the city. It’s not exactly in the center of the city, but was close enough to walk to any of the major areas without a lot of difficulty. The guest house itself was nicer than I was expecting, with 2 floors of around 20 bunks each, and with curtains for privacy. While there wasn’t a lot of room, the facilities were very clean, and there were a lot of other interesting travelers there to talk with.

Perhaps the most surprising part of the trip was how much it reminded me of Canada. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why, but there was a lot of small things, like how, compared to other urban areas in Japan, the streets are much wider, there are much fewer historical/old style Japanese buildings, and much fewer temples shrines and castles; I believe either the city or the prefecture were celebrating 150 years of being named that way, which is 1 year later than Canada became a country; the subway system map is uncannily shaped like Toronto’s; there is actual proper farms and forests between cities, instead of suburban and urban areas just being attached for hundreds of kilometers; and even the trees were much more familiar, as there were many more evergreens and maples. It’s also not crazy big like Osaka or Tokyo. I think for Canadian people, they would find it a lot closer to home there.

All in all, I had a great time there, and I think it was a perfect way to round out my year.

There was also a zoo, where I took about half of the pictures from the trip. You can them them out and more in the full gallery of photos here.