Sapporo - City of Cakes

Today we flew from Tokyo to Sapporo. A fairly uneventful journey all told... Although I should mention the "Tokyo Monorail" airport train service is not the nicest journey in the universe. I couldn't get the Simpson's "monorail, monorail!" song out of my head the entire journey. I could actually picture the slick salesman telling Tokyo city council that this monorail would be the success that all the others weren't.

Mono... doh!

So once we arrived, we discovered a very different city than Tokyo. A strong American influence meant that the streets are all laid out in a perfect grid and numbered by North/East/South/West. For example, our hotel is on West 5, North 5. If you have ever been to New York it is all very familiar and extremely easily to navigate around.

We did all the standard tourist destinations, we saw Sapporo Clock Tower, the Hokkaido Old Government Building and the Botanical Gardens. However they were far less interesting than the shopping provided here. Simply put, the shopping is quite brilliant! All nicely connected, tons of stores, plenty of variety. This is great, however the real treat is the number of cake shops. Oh, my, God! So many on offer and they all look so damn good.

I bought a strawberry and cream sponge cake that I had fully planned on taking a photo of to show everyone. The thing is though, once I had it out of the box... Well it looked so yummy... So I ate it straight up... 美味しかった！！！ (delicious!!!)

Tomorrow, before we leave for Noboribetsu, we plan to sample one (or two) of the many parfaits available. Stay tuned for our upcoming parfiat taste test!