Sapporo Beer Museum and Biergarten

Whilst visiting the Sapporo Snow Festival a couple of months ago, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to visit the Sapporo Beer Museum, dedicated to Hokkaido's most famous brew.

The red brick building dates back to 1890

The museum is about the history of Sapporo Breweries and beer brewing in Japan more generally. There are good quality English-language leaflets available so you can actually learn quite a bit about the history of the company as you walk around the displays, even if you don't speak Japanese. The attractive building which houses the museum dates to 1890, and was originally the factory for the Sapporo Sugar Company.

A view of the building's tower, which can be seen from miles away!

The museum has a series of really cool animated models on the 3rd floor, which display the different stages of the brewing process. There is also a timeline of the history of the company, including where the brewing technique came from. A member of the company went to Germany in 1873 to learn the craft, and returned as Japan's first brewing master: which probably explains why the beer tastes so good! 

One of my favourite elements of the museum, which continues down on the 2nd floor, are the displays of the packaging design and posters from previous eras.

Yebisu beer bottles from the early 1900s

Interesting choice of brand name...

Some of the company's non-alcoholic beverages

A range of rather artistic designs for beer cans

The museum itself is free to enter, but you have to pay for the samples at the end. You can get a tasting set of three beers (Sapporo Black Label, Sapporo Classic and Kaitakushi Beer) for 500JPY, which is pretty good value I think. You also get a free snack of cheese or crackers to go with your beer!

The tasting set goes down well!

Next door to the museum is the Sapporo Biergarten, where you can go on to have a few more beers if the tasting set wasn't enough!

You can enjoy draft beer in this nostalgic beer hall, as well as one of Hokkaido's best-loved dishes, Genghis Khan (Jingisukan). The dish consists of mutton and a selection of vegetables (cabbage, beansprouts etc), which are all cooked by the diner on a metal skillet at the table. It is well worth trying, although be warned that you will leave smelling of grilled lamb!!

You start by melting some fat onto the skillet...

... and then grill away to your heart's content!

The Sapporo Beer Museum and Biergarten are definitely a fun way to spend an afternoon in Sapporo! If you visit Sapporo and visit just one place, you can't go wrong with the a trip to the Beer Museum.

Have you tried any Japanese beers? How do you think they compare to European or American beers?

The 67th Sapporo Snow Festival

Sapporo Snow Festival is one of Hokkaido's biggest events, attracting around 2 million tourists, both from within Japan and from abroad. The main attraction of the festival is the many ice sculptures in Odori Park. Some are made by local people and groups, others by international entrants. It's actually a competition with a judging panel awarding prizes in different categories. This year's festival ran from 5 to 18 February. I spent a much-needed night away from ski resort life to visit the festival on 10 and 11 February.

I was lucky enough to find a room to stay at Cross Hotel, despite organising the trip fairly last minute. It's a lovely boutique hotel just a stone's throw away from Odori Park, the main site for the Snow Festival.

The only room they had left was on the (in their words) 'exclusive' Cross Floor. This is the top floor of the building that has rooms (the public bath is on the very top floor), and has impressive views over Sapporo, particularly at night. The room also came with a complimentary bottle of Mashike Cidre which I thoroughly enjoyed, as cider is not as easy to come across in Japan as in England!

The rooms are stylishly furnished, and spacious for a Japanese hotel room. There were lots of little details that made the stay more enjoyable: for example instead of sachets of instant coffee in the room, they provide ground coffee in a disposable filter that you sit on top of your mug and pour hot water through. Just that little bit more luxurious (not to mention tastier).

As I mentioned, the hotel also has a public bath (daiyokujou) on the top floor. This is a relaxing way to end the day, and offers an attractive view of the city. However, having gotten used to the quality of the beautiful natural waters from hot springs, which are used in onsens in the Niseko area, sitting in a slightly chlorinated bath just isn't the same.

The breakfast at Cross Hotel alone makes the hotel worth staying it. I could literally spend hours at the buffet! It has an interesting selection of Asian and Western foods, and is perfect the adventurous eater. Some of the dishes available on the morning we stayed were: Chinese leaf caesar salad, Chinese yam and beef gratin, squid salad with wholegrain mustard, macaroni salad with roe and sweetcorn bread. They also had all the things you'd expect, such as eggs and bacon. I'm going to stop the list there as my stomach is rumbling in memory of the breakfast!

As I bought my new camera on the second day of the trip, I didn't get many photos of the hotel unfortunately. However I did get a shot of the ice bar outside the hotel, where we enjoyed hot mulled wine!

Bar tenders wrapped up warm behind the ice bar!

Now, onto the festival itself. On the first night we had a look around at some of the larger sculptures, which are illuminated after sunset. There were some very impressive lighting displays which really brought the sculptures to life. They were often accompanied by live or recorded music too!

The next day we took a proper stroll around the festival and all the ice sculptures, big and small. Although there was significant melting of some of the sculptures, as they had been carved days earlier, I still managed to get some good photos.

Pretty impressive stuff! All that wandering around in the cold does make you hungry... but luckily the festival is lined with food stalls. You can literally eat your way along the park. Grilled skewers were the most popular warm snack for the cold visitors!

I would love to visit the festival again. The only draw-back is that it is quite an expensive time to visit Sapporo, as the hotels put their prices up for the festival. But I thought it was worth it. Next time I'd like to visit nearer the start of the festival so that I can see the sculptures before they start melting.

Tips for visiting Sapporo Snow Festival
A couple of pointers for planning a trip to the famous festival.

• Plan ahead as hotels and other accommodation can book out months in advance.
• You may wish to book restaurants in advance too... my first choice for dinner, Kanihonke, was booked out when I tried to make a reservation.
• Make sure you take a look at the festival at night, as the sculptures are spectacularly illuminated.
• Wrap up! Sapporo is pretty cold at this time of year, so make sure to wear lots of layers if you are going to be walking around the various outdoor festival sites all day.

Other Sapporo Sights

There are lots of other interesting places to visit if you are staying in Sapporo for a few days or more.

• Sapporo Winter Sports Museum is located by the ski jump for the 1972 Winter Olympics. You can take a lift to the top for a panoramic view of Sapporo, and then head into the museum itself, which has lots of interesting historical materials relating to winter sports, as well as lots of interactive areas where you can have a go at simulated ice-skating, ski-jumping etc!
• The Ainu Centre has a small but informative exhibit about the Ainu, who are the indigenous people of Hokkaido. They are not ethnically Japanese and have their own language, cultures and customs. Although now the Japanese government is making an effort to recognise the culture of Ainu people, for a long time in the country's history these indigenous people were oppressed.
• Sapporo TV Tower offers one of the best views of the city. It's also conveniently located at one end of the Snow Festival's Odori Park site, so very easy to access.
• The Sapporo Beer Museum - which I will write a separate blog post about!

Have you ever been to Sapporo Snow Festival, or another ice sculpture festival? Are there any other sights I should visit next time I take a trip to Sapporo?

Update from The Land of the Rising Sun

I arrived in Japan on 29 October 2015, over 5 months ago... and I haven't written a blog post since. So, the most inconsistent blogger of the year award goes to yours truly. Sorry!

Within about 10 days of arriving in Japan, my iPhone, which I'd used to take photos for my blog previously, broke. It may or may not have fallen victim to an alcoholic soaking during a drinking game. I'd had it for a few years already, and had to have the screen on it replaced, so it was on its way out anyway, but I think being doused in fluid was sadly the final straw.

Without photos to show I didn't really feel motivated to blog. Plus, I got distracted with daily life, living and working in this resort, and getting waist deep in powder snow in my time off.

However, I did buy a new camera a couple of months ago. I bought a Canon Powershot G9X. It was expensive but actually takes some really decent photos, so it was a worthwhile investment. Now that I've built up a library of photos again, and as I'm about to embark on 6 weeks of travelling in Kansai and Kyushu regions of Japan, it seemed like a good time to revive the blog.

For now, I'm going to share a few photos that I have taken on my new camera.

Mount Yohtei

Mount Yohtei is an inactive volcano in Hokkaido, and it sits opposite the resort where I live/work (which is on Mount Niseko-Annupuri). Most days it's hard to see the top of Yohtei because it's too cloudy, but I got this shot on a rare sunny day. There was still a bit of cloud though as you can see! I love Mount Yohtei, and I think its beauty definitely rivals its better-known cousin, Mount Fuji. When I see a view like this, I know I made the right choice to leave London. How could you ever get bored of waking up to a majestic sight like this?

Gyu Bar

Hirafu is famous for it apres-ski scene. Although a lot of the bars aren't much different to anywhere else in the world, some of them are unique. Gyu Bar certainly is. It's nicknamed the Fridge Door bar, and I'm sure you can see why! The entrance is really small and you have to be careful to duck and avoid hitting your head. Easy enough on the way in, but after a few drinks you can forget to do the same on the way out! As well as having an impressive selection of spirits (in particular whiskies), they also do some amazing cocktails. They're often traditional cocktails with a Japanese twist, for example their yuzu mojito, which uses Japanese yuzu instead of limes - yum!

Sashimi platter at Hanayoshi

Now, a post from Japan wouldn't be complete without a picture of sushi or sashimi, would it?! The presentation of this sashimi platter at Hanayoshi blew me away: it's so delicate and beautifully arranged. The restaurant source fish from the famous Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, as well as from local fisheries in Hokkaido. As well as the usual suspects of salmon and tuna, this also had scallop, octopus, squid, prawns, abalone... and a few other things I couldn't quite work out! I personally love the delicate flavour of sashimi much more than that of cooked fish.

Attack on Titan ice sculpture

This year I made it to Sapporo Snow Festival, finally! Although I've been to Sapporo a couple of times before, I never came at the right time of year to see the snow festival. This year was the 67th edition of the festival, which features hundreds of ice sculptures, from the size of a snowman, up to monumental sizes. The above photo is part of one of the show's centrepieces (the sculpture is huge: the size of a building!) which is inspired by the manga series Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan). I'll write a separate post about the snow festival as it's one of the most popular events in Hokkaido: plus I took a lot of photos!

You have reached the end of my update post! Thank you for reading it, and I promise it won't be another 5 months before I post again!