Welcome To Sapporo!

Welcome to Sapporo! Or appropriate sentiment if you already live here!

A while ago I decided to drop the personal side of my blog and just use it as a guide to things in Sapporo (mostly cafés and restaurants) for English speakers living or coming here. There are similar things out there, but every little helps when you're in a country whose language you're not all that comfortable in. Recently I've been far too busy to update regularly, or in fact check comments and messages, but I've heard from people who find this thing useful and I'm really glad I could be of some help to somebody. Getting comments and the like makes me want to pull my finger out of... wherever it was stuck and at least post a little more. So I will be trying to send out a few more dispatches in case anyone finds them of any use. Don't call it a New Year's Resolution! Ha ha, but seriously I wouldn't trust myself to keep it if it were.

If you're moving here or have just moved here I hope you can find some info here you can use too, and I'm always happy to answer questions and try and help out. But there are other places I'd recommend too.

For jobs, local information, sales of belongings and more you should really check out The Hokkaido Insider. There's a free mailing list to get local news and details of people with items for sale, and for a small charge you can sign up for an extremely useful mailing list with jobs available in the area.

After I finished working full time and was looking for work I went to the job centre Hello Work a few times. They weren't at all set up to help out foreigners though, and would generally recommend I check the big Japanese Jobs for foreigners site Gaijin Pot Jobs or The Hokkaido Insider. Since Gaijin Pot never seems to carry any jobs for Hokkaido (in my experience) The Hokkaido Insider is an invaluable resource for people looking for work up here.

Also worth checking out is Best of Sapporo Japan a great general site about Sapporo run by a friend of mine. Food, events, general living advice, he covers pretty much everything.

More links in the sidebar over there, so go click.

This year in Sapporo we're having a freezing December with a bumper load of snow. Earlier in the year the beloved local baseball team Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters won the Pacific League, but lost out in the Japan series to the cursed Yomiuri Giants, champions of the Central League. Nonetheless, there was a massive parade in the city centre and everything was covered in confetti for a while. My favourite Japanese album of the year was Stories by Zazen Boys, but take that with a pinch of salt because they've been my favourite Japanese band for years and I didn't find much new Japanese music I really liked this year.

So, are we all up to speed? Then let's continue into the new year! Boys Be! And so on.

Sapporo Food: Voyage Soup Curry

Ok! It's the holidays and I am finally on holiday. Therefore I should be able to find the time to post something, right? Well here is something, and this something is long overdue.

Soup curry, that glorious and uniquely Sapporo fusion of 'curry' and 'soup' is a great love of mine. That said I know a lot of really great soup curry places but I wouldn't go so far as to label any of them 'the best'. No one soup curry place is exactly like any other and subjectivity has a huge part to play, as you can see from some old comments I got saying they didn't like the place I liked, and recommending a couple of places that I really want to go to, but still haven't been able to since I neither live, nor work, anywhere near them.

The best soup curry I can remember having was at Lavi Lavi in Kita 24 Jo, but it was their monthly special and so it was gone almost as soon as I found it. After that I found Lavi Lavi to be a great place, but one day I went and it just wasn't as good for some reason, and it's never reached the heights it used to since. Oh, but the new branch in Sapporo Station's ESTA mall is a really convenient place to get a decent dish.

So soup curry shops vary wildly in quality, style and reliability, but the place that I would recommend to pretty much anybody is Voyage in Kita 24 Jo.

I'm sorry, soup calyi, my mistake.

Voyage is run by the same people that run Xysa nearby and Picante, which has a couple of locations now. All three are similar I think, but not exactly the same, and I like Voyage, possibly because I've been there much more often.

The food at voyage is great, and it seems to be consistently great. I've never had a lousy curry there, and I always leave glad that I made the trip. Their vegetables and meat are delicious and well cooked (something which seems a little hit and miss with some places) and they don't skimp on the veggies too, which is something I'm always happy to see. You can always choose a basic soup or a rich soup (the rich soup varies by day of the week too, just to keep things interesting) and both are delicious. It costs more to take your curry above spice level 2, but spice level 2 seems just perfect so I never bother. Add to this the tremendous toppings they do and while Voyage might not be the best I really find it hard to believe anyone would be disappointed to go there.

Oh look! Photos!

Crunchy herb chicken with  fried gyoza and potato dumpling with cheese toppings. That potato and cheese thing... oh my God.

Herb Lamb with... um, the same toppings.

Basic vegetable with just the gyoza topping. They also do a deluxe vegetable curry just crammed with stuff.

The menu at Voyage seems to change pretty regularly, but some things, like the crunchy herb chicken above are always there. Voyage soups are served in these unique bowls with this big raised section in the middle. You can't see them in those photos but imagine that the actual soup is in a donut shaped section, while the middle acts like a kind of table for you to cut things up on. It's interesting, and pretty useful when you get used to it. A cynical man might say it makes it look like you get more than you do, but I am not that man, and I always leave sated so I have no complaints.

I'll say it again, I'm not promising that Voyage will blow you away but in my experience it is always very, very good. I've been meaning to blog about it ever since I started this thing and it comes strongly recommended. It's a three or four minute walk from Kita 24 Jo station on the Namboku line of the subway, and I've marked it on my map.

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Sapporo Food: Soup Curry Yellow

Yellow is a very cool, popular soup curry place in Odori that's been around for a long time. I wasn't all that impressed by the soup actually, but I really should go back and check it out again since there's a lot to like.

I say cool because the place has its own DJ booth and is decked out with record sleeves from Sapporo's kings of underground hip-hop Tha Blue Herb. They even have a curry named for them, which is pretty awesome. In fact, I don't really need to tell you because they have a kind of inside-the-store google view thing linked from their site! Check it out!

And they serve this local brew that I'd never heard of and that wasn't half bad.

I really want to give the place another chance because it's popular and it's been around for a while, but I didn't really dig either the soup or the vegetables that much. The giant slice of 'bacon' that I had in mine though - that was amazing.

I'm sure the place is worth checking out, but I wouldn't recommend it yet. I often say that opinions on soup curry are far more subjective than about many other foods. People often don't like places that I love and vice versa (I actually decided to write about Yellow rather than another place that a friend asked me to go to but that I thought basically sucked). If I go back and it's great then I'll update and let you all know for sure. If it's not... well I guess I'll do that too.

It's on my map! And you should probably check it out and make up your own mind since you can never have too much soup curry.

Sapporo Cafes: Musica Hall Cafe

Musica Hall Cafe is a very cool little place in Odori. They put on a lot of little indie acoustic nights there I think, and while I've never been to one of those it's a great place for coffee or lunch too.

It's on the third floor of this old building, but you should see the sign outside just fine. These snaps are from a while ago, but I've been there pretty regularly since and it never changes (except for the little art installations on the walls). They have a nice, pretty cheap daily lunch deal which can look something like this:

And they have a full menu too, which has things like this:

I like the place. The coffee's pretty good, it's not too expensive and fancy and it's nice and central. I'll put it on my map so do feel free to check it out.

Sapporo Cafes: To Ov

Ok then, let's get back into this. I warn you, I'm going to try and catch up on over a year of lethargy-induced slacking so things might get messy. Since last we spoke Sapporo remains wonderful, although this summer was pure and simple hell, dragging on and on and on... Signs are good that we might be free of it's mercilessly suffocating embrace! Merciless! Ah.

To Ov cafe (pronounced To-On?) is a lovely little gallery/cafe near Nakajima Kouen Station on the Namboku line. There's a small gallery room in one half and a nice little cafe in the other half. Very good music while I was there, from a jazz selection to some mix that included The Beatles, Yann Tiersen and Sufjan Stevens. The place is full of art books and magazines too, which is always nice, and very stylishly decorated. And it has a bathroom almost too classy to use.

Oddly, because I was already thoroughly caffeinated, I didn't try the coffee there. But the lychee juice was great and the coconut curry I had for lunch was great.

Yuki liked her sandwich. Her opinion: too small for the price, but really delicious.

I liked the place and I'm going to try to go back sometime. It's on my map and well worth going if you're looking for a cafe in the area. I'm afraid I'm going to cut down on the addresses and contact details for now so I can post more. You can click on the link in the name above, no problem sir.

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