Friday, 18 July 2014

Sapporo: Curry Soup and The Park in the Swamps

Getting to Sapporo was more of an adventure than last time ^^
Because I wanted to see as much as possible of Sapporo, I took the flight at 6am from Narita Airport. To be there in time, I had to take the last train (about 11:30pm) and a bus which went for over 4 hours from Tokyo to Narita. But I still don't understand why the bus took a stop of 30 minutes right in front of the airport area. Well, I got there in time, so no problem for me :D

After landing in Sapporo and arriving at the main station by train around 10am, I was picked up by Kai-san. He was the owner of my apartment which I used for homestay. At first, I planned to go into a hostel like last time, but due to the public holiday on Friday, all hostels were already full. So Kai-san picked me up and we went a bit outside of Sapporo so that I could see more of the surrounding area.
Sapporo City from the Distance
The more you get out, the more you see that Sapporo is surrounded by nature. There are mountains and forests, Kai-san told me that sometimes foxes and even giant bears get lost and go into residential areas. Unfortunately, if a bear comes into the area, you can only call the police which sends out a hunter to shoot the bear. A method for bringing them back seems not to be used.

At lunch time, Kai-san showed me a local delicacy: Curry Soup. I've never heard of it before and yet it seemed to be one of the most popular things of Sapporo. As the name states, you get a bowl with curry soup which varies on the spicy level depending on what you choose. They had up to 30 levels in the restaurant, so I took 10 ^^
Within the soup, they put a lot of fried ingredients, like carrots, beans, broccoli and courgette (zucchini). And man, this is sooooo delicious :) I could really taste the "fried flavor" of all ingredients and the curry soup was perfect. I bet it tastes even better in winter, when you're cold ^^
Curry Soup ... what a taste ... mmhhhh :)
After enjoying this meal, we went to the モエレ沼公園 (moerenuma kouen) which can be roughly translated to "Park of the Moere Swamp". It was one of the places of interest in which I picked interest the last time too, but was too busy to actually visit it. Because it is a little bit outside of the city, Kai-san was so nice and went with me to the park. He also stated that he knows the park very well and visits it sometimes with his family too.
Small Part of the Park
When I hear the word "park", usually I think of a place with many plants in which I can walk some time until I am through. But man, this park was a reaaally big area. In the past, there was a big swamp here, now you can only see remains which are still big. As I read in a review before, this park is used by many artists to show their installations. For example, there is a fountain which goes through a variety of programs to demonstrate waves, fog or just a big jet of water which you can easily see from far away. It was at least 5m high.
There is much to discover in this place, so we spent about 5 hours there. Afterwards, Kai-san brought me home and showed me the apartment. Funny thing is, it's built like my apartment in Hodogaya (Yokohama), but it had more space and somehow felt better. Probably because it was neat ;)

And I got some things for my stay like my first meals, a map of the area, some way descriptions for the trains and so on. At this point, thanks to Kai-san who guided me this day and for this awesome homestay experience. Maybe I will try it again :)
Presents in the Apartment
You can even swim here! (if you are a child ;)
Road to Success (?)

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