Theme of the day: COLD. 2nd theme of the day: RAIN. That being set-up, let's get into it...
We are at a VRBO and had to fend for ourselves for breakfast. In our search last night at the grocery store, we looked around and around...and around, but could only find a pack of 3(?) hard boiled eggs with some sauce packet. Good enough. Sitting down at the table this morning, he cracked one and turns out it was soft boiled people, and when we say soft boiled, we really mean almost-raw; we told you the Japanese like the gelatinous texture. Tsana suggested some additional boiling, and he was good to go.
We headed over to Starbucks in the rain (that would plague our entire morning). As we've mentioned previously, nothing is open in Japan in the morning, so we sat around Starbucks for about an hour before we headed back to our apartment to meet our guide for our private tour. We also met the nicest barista who spoke perfect English because she went to an international school down the street (and we continued to feel bad for our inability to speak Japanese).
We met Kumiko, our guide for the day, and it was fully pouring and frigid at this point, so naturally we went into some gardens. Great. But this was attached to a "museum" which was really just a glorified conference center. Apparently, it was a hotel built around 1870s that different emperors would come stay in, and although it wasn't our style, it did keep us out of the rain for a bit.
After the museum we headed to the central arcade, a covered outdoor shopping center. Dave bought a nice Japanese steel kitchen knife, and with Sapporo having no UPS, FedEx, or DHL in the area, our guide's solution for shipping this monstrosity (and some would consider, weapon), was for Kumiko to send it to us. "Hey guys, why don't you just check it in your luggage?" Great question. Please see back to Day 1 on our way here and how we made the 20 minute connection, with all of our clothes, aka carry-on only.
Next stop, in the rain, was the fish market. It's the only market we've ever been to where they are like "hey, here's a sample of this $30 p/kilo crab meat." We obliged. We also sampled some cantaloupe, and met a nice shop owner who gave us some candy (he was especially lovely and wrote down all the different places foreigners who visited his booth, came from).
Lunch time: cue the ramen (Sapporo is FAMOUS for their ramen). We ducked into a ramen shop where a bunch of movie stars (that we didn't know) have also eaten. We definitely had a moment with one of the owners when we saw her Martha's Vineyard postcards on her checkout area, and told her we were from that state. She was not the nicest in the beginning, but after our connection was made, she was all smiles.
The rain was basically done at this point (although still cold and Tsana kept on her 4 layers) and Kumiko took us to a historical Hokkaido village (Hokkaido is the name of the island Sapporo is on). If you have been to Detroit, think Greenfield Village, but with a slight Japanese twist. We arrived and Kumiko asked one of the volunteer guides to give us an English tour, and we were joined by Meiki (from Tokyo- rockin' chica). The whole two hours ended being more like Englanese, and I'm 99% sure that no one understood 100% fully of what was going on.
We saw a printing press (which we got to try!), an old sake distillery, and a fisherman's house, barber shop, photo studio, and a few other old-timey buildings. Everything was super western-influenced and I'm pretty sure if we asked nicely enough, Kumiko would have moved to the USA. She was an Americanophile (is that a thing?) quoting James Dean, and knowing who Paul Simon was, and saying 100 commendations about the US. There was a movie being filmed at the village today too, and we thought Kumiko was gonna jump into a scene, she didn't know what to do with herself. We took a horse drawn trolley back to the start before we all headed back to town.
Quite the day, if you ask us! Retired early, mostly because Tsana was too warm to get out under the blanket.