Hokkaido - Sapporo: Day 4

     Today we leave our Asahikawa base and head to Sapporo on the JR train. This is the Lil Muchkin's first train ride. Originally excited, she soon settled down and slept through the one and a half hours to Sapporo.

      As our hotel rooms were not ready, we headed out to the underground shopping mall, Apia. Here, we located the Sanrio shop and bought enough to have points to redeem free gifts.

     The main highlight of today is dinner at Nemuro Hanamaru. Situated on the sixth floor of JR Tower Stella Place, this restaurant serves the best sushi in Sapporo, according to Trip Advisor. Take a number and you'll be lucky if it's your turn after waiting an hour. In the meantime, we explored Diamaru departmental store just next to Stella Dining.

The restaurant queue took up both sides of the space.

     The wifey was quite disappointed when we learnt from one of the shops in Diamaru that Burberry Blue Label had seemingly exited Japan. A quick check with Uncle Google explained that Burberry London had cancelled the licensing for Blue Label. However, since the products were developed locally, the brand could now exist under its own name, hence the "new" entity Blue/ Black Label Ctestbridge. Needless to say, we'll find time to check it out tomorrow.

      Back to the restaurant; it was finally our turn after almost an hour and a half. The food arrived on thw dot and soon it was clear why this is considered to best sushi restaurant in Sapporo.

Oh so good miso swordfish sushi

     The ikura was unlike those found in back home. Instead of being overly salty, it was almost sweet. The Lil Munchkin had a field day, consuming more than four on her own. Another note-worthy sushi was the miso swordfish. It was unlike any swordfish I had tasted. Unlike the expected white chunky meat, the translucent flesh coupled with bits of Japanese lime turned out very refreshing.

     We also had four servings of chawanmushi, two bowls of asari soup, the cousin had grape juice and plum jelly; all this for around eighty sing bucks! A fitting end to our first day in Sapporo.