Japan trip Spring 2016 Part 2: Arrival to CTS & Day 1 - Curb Market, Shiroi Koibito Park and shopping in Sapporo

Flying Hawaiian again! Our flight was May 12 at 12:15pm, and I went straight from work to the airport because I had to get those first 4 working hours in! Checked in with little to no line and without any notable issues. It was much less busy than at the time we usually fly!
(P.S. Please forgive the minimal and simplistic editing! I got a new laptop since my old one completely failed on me but still don't have Photoshop on it yet!)

Went through a semi-decent TSA line and then took a short walk to Gate 59.

My carry on bags!

Once we got on the plan, we realized -

NO PERSONAL MONITORS ON THE HEADRESTS! Lol such a luxury we had become accustomed to on Hawaiian flights to Japan! The plane is definitely an older one. You can tell by the seats, the bathroom, etc.
But at least I had my lunch I guess lol.

One good thing was that the flight was practically half empty though! The two rows behind me and S were completely empty. My parents had booked separately and were sitting in an entirely different section. Apparently they ended up each taking one 3-seat row to themselves lmao.

Our last look at Oahu (approx. 12:30pm on May 12) -

and first look at Hokkaido (approx. 4:00pm on May 13)!

Exited the plane quickly and also got through customs/immigration magically fast! Also got our baggage reasonably quickly, and we walked through the airport.

Got to the JR Information office and exchanged our JR Rail Pass vouchers for the real thing and also reserved our seats for several trains at this time. + we were also able to buy our ticket from the airport to Sapporo station.

The entrance to the JR line tracks is quite close to the JR Information office.

Got off the train at Sapporo station about 37 minutes later and walked from there towards Odori station for about 15 minutes. It's pretty much a straight path underground so we didn't have much of an issue despite never being in the area before and having our luggage.

Left Odori station from Exit 1 and quickly found the Hotel Resol Trinity Sapporo.

We checked in, received the pocket wifi unit, dropped off our bags and then immediately went back out in search of dinner because I hadn't eaten a proper meal in a while wtf.

Luckily, we happened upon an Ootoya! I had never tried it before myself but I remembered that Cheesie blogged about it a lot in the past and figured it was a pretty safe bet, especially for the price. There was a short wait but nothing unreasonable.

Our meals -

My dad really enjoyed his and by the time we were done, he was looking forward to the next opportunity for us to eat at Ootoya lmao. I was quite satisfied with mine as well!

A quick, unfocused shot of the clock tower I took while walking back the hotel before calling it a night!

 DAY 1

May 14 was the first real day of the trip! We had checked the weather and apparently it was to be much warmer than I had anticipated so I had to do some mental outfit reshuffling and ended up wearing my Liz Lisa x My Melody 9th collab cherry OP in pink <3

We headed out from the hotel for the subway station, and the weather was truly quite nice!

We figured out that it was actually best to use Exit 3 (for entering and exiting Odori station) although Exit 1 is reasonable as well.

It was entirely uncrowded, and we were able to easily buy our "Doni Chika" subway ticket for the day from the machines.

With that taken care of, we were off for the day! From Odori station, we were bound for Nijuyonken station.

We arrived a few stops later and used the wifi (and two girls who seemed to also be headed to the same place) to help us navigate about a 10 minute walk to the Curb Market.

We were surprised how empty it was when we first arrived! It was about 08:30am, and I think we were used to the hustle and bustle of Tsukiji. But tbh not feeling like we were in everyone's way was quite nice haha.

The first thing we did was find a restaurant that served crab for breakfast. Each person (except me wtf bc I don't eat seafood) ordered a donburi with two kinds of crab. The meal also came with crab miso soup!

A look at where we ate - (the restaurant also serves soft serve!)

By the time we were done eating, mounds of people had showed up now that it was closer to 10:00am! We explored the area a little more and did a bit of omiyage shopping.

When we were done, we left the market area and walked back to the station, stopping briefly at a grocery store and a Lawson's to pick up a few other items.

From there, we left Nijuyonken station and continued to Miyanosawa station.

While we were walking from the station, we passed a few trees full of pink blossoms!

After about a casual 8 minute walk (again, so uncrowded), we found it - Shiroi Koibito Park!

I love the cat, heart and flower details on the rails!

Just inside the entrance gates were all these little houses that I assume are for children to play in lol. But I couldn't resist trying one out myself!

Sorry, saw this gorgeous looking toilet and had to take a picture too lol.

We paid for entry to check out some of the exhibits in the factory and each received a free cookie and a "passport" -

The exhibits are self-guided and, during the time we visited, only moderately crowded at certain times in certain areas. (There was an ebb and flow of people depending on the exhibit as some garnered more attention than others.)

Checking out the process to create the famous cookies!

Hahaha, I love all the décor in the factory where it seems like so many people are looking down from a balcony. And you can tell the workers put so much effort into what they do!

I also really enjoyed all the little details in the tour which was led by cat prints!

At the end of the factory tour, there is a cake display area with so many elaborate creations!

And also a seemingly random but super cute small puppet theatre on your way down the stairs.

Celebrating the 20th anniversary!

Other non-fee based parts of the park outside the factory tour included a Gramophone Gallery

And a toy gallery!

There are so many more than what I was able to briefly and crudely photograph. And interest exhibit for sure!
The area also featured this suddenly appearing figure (sorry I don't know what he's from >,<) in what otherwise looks like reflective glass! Tbh I was too absorbed in trying to get the perfect selfie to be scared wtf.

There is also a Candy Labo store on the first floor across from the Ishiya products. For 100yen, you would receive a random piece of candy from this light up machine!

We did our omiyage shopping

and then enjoyed the outdoor portion of the park!

There was this fabulous flower garden with a heart cut out!

And a bit further down, there was another cut out and a little gopher would pop up and pretend to hammer you hahahaha.

Also I had to selfie with the colorful background too.

We left the park

And decided to have ramen for lunch back at Miyanosawa station for lunch.

We returned to Odori station via subway and went back to hotel to drop off our purchases a rest a short while. S ended up sleeping from then (about 03:15pm) until the end of the night when I woke him up and then through the night wtf hahaha. The rest of us did a little shopping in/around Sapporo station.
For some reason, it's always funny to see Hawaii stuff outside of Hawaii.

We were originally going to go to a Loft on the 6th floor but got distracted by a CanDo 100yen shop on B2 instead lolol. My mom loves to shop at these kinds of places.

 Then I managed to find my way to Paseo East which is where I planned to look for my alternate pair of shoes for the trip. Thankfully, the Ank Rouge store there had the shoes I wanted in my preferred color and size!

We also stopped at a Sanrio store and I was surprised that it still had almost all of the Hello Kitty x Laura Ashley products?? I was so tempted to get one of the purses but I felt like it was too early in the trip to splurge on something so unexpected.

S was supposed to meet up with us for dinner but since he was still sleeping, we had dinner at one of the buildings near Sapporo station. My dad picked the restaurant bc there was a special sign for something he wanted but it turns out that they were sold out of it FHL. -__-

He ended up with some sort of steak that he said was terrible bc it was so, so tough and hard to eat lol. I enjoyed my pizza though. It was unexpectedly stuffed crust!

Had to buy myself some masks bc I had a little bit of a cough. And also the next few days were expected to be colder than the pleasantly warm weather we had this day.

We picked up some pastries and dessert

and walked back to the hotel where we were intending on calling it a night. But since I still had some energy and it didn't seem that far away, I wanted to check out the Don Quixote in the area since there were a few things we needed. My mom and I sent my dad back to the rooms with our purchases and continued on for a few blocks.

One of the things on my list was moisturizer and sunblock which were somewhat easy buys because we had purchased them on past trips.

And of course we picked up a bunch of other stuff too lol.

Looking back, we actually seemed to have done a lot this day although it was all very casual! Started out pretty early in the morning because the first task was a crab breakfast and then ended up eating a late lunch due to spending so much time at Shiroi Koibito Park which was much more interesting and had a lot more to offer than I had anticipated! I would definitely recommend checking it out if you visit Sapporo. The all day Doni Chika subway pass for 520yen was also a great asset and easy to purchase. A pretty good start to our trip! (And also allowed S to catch up on some much needed sleep without having him miss out on much lol.)

✦ Japan trip Spring 2016 posts
Part 1: Packing (Liz Lisa outfits) for Hokkaido to Osaka in May
Part 2: Arrival to CTS & Day 1 - Curb Market, Shiroi Koibito Park and shopping in Sapporo
Part 3: Day 2 - Nijo Market, Sapporo Beer Garden & Tanukikoji in Sapporo
Part 4: Day 3 - Exploring Otaru & experiencing the Hakodate Liner
Part 5: Day 4 - Morning Market, Red Brick Warehouses & Mt Hakodate in Hakodate
Part 6: Day 5 - Hokkaido Shinkansen & shopping in Tokyo and Funabashi
Part 7: Day 6 - Tokyo DisneySea
Part 8: Day 7 - Last minute shopping in Omiya and Tokyo & Tokaido Shinkansen to Osaka
Part 9: Day 8 - Kinkakuji in Kyoto & shopping in Osaka
Part 10: Day 9 - Utsubo Park Rose Festival, Namba/Shinsaibashi & departure from KIX in Osaka
Part 11: Liz Lisa shopping, purchases & coordinates
Part 12: Other shopping, purchases & coordinates
Part 13: Travel notes - Hotels, Luggage forwarding & Pocket wifi

✦ Japan trip Autumn 2015 posts
✦ Japan trip Summer 2015 posts
✦ Japan trip Spring 2015 posts
✦ Japan trip Summer 2014 posts