Soooo there's a chocolate factory in Sapporo. Yeah.. it was in need of a visit.
Welcome to Shiroi Koibito Park! Or if translated - White Lover(s). Not going to lie, it was an odd thing to find in Japan. Huge European influence on the facility, it's history, and current look. But it was a fun little place. In a couple of weeks when everything starts to bloom I'm sure it will look amazing. Where I'm here right as spring is hitting and there's still snow in spots. It was a little less green.
You can take a tour of the facility which includes some museum type rooms, the production line, toy museum, and a place to buy some cookies!
Don't mind me just playing with the camera.
Welcome, to the Choooooocolate Time Tunnellllll. Which sadly is not made of actual chocolate.
Had some little models that were making chocolate the old fashioned way and some instructions on how it was done.
Right after that you can see the production floor. The cookies that are most famous and most common are a thing wafer with a very sweet thin white chocolate between them. I was half expecting something like Milano cookies from Pepperidge Farm but these were far far better.
Break time at the cafe. They'd put out some things they made for display and sale.
Annnd lunch. A healthy super awesome lunch. The cookies on the side are the Shiroi Koibito cookies. The rest is well... fruits and ice cream. Which is also good!
They had chocolate milk! I like milk and I love chocolate milk so I had to try it. They also gave you this orange drops to put into it (as seen on the left) that was supposed to make it taste better. Not entirely sure if it did or not... tasted just fine without and with.
Gramophone museum? Sure why not!
Robot on a motorcycle with glowing eyes and audio? Hey, we've already got some gramophones so let's do it.
There's also an extensive underground network of tunnels running all around Sapporo. I didn't explore a ton of it but I get a feeling you could get most places walking under ground. Where the winter here gets pretty cold I'm sure it's quite a nice thing to have. Right now it hasn't been all that bad aside from a bit of wind.
Above the Sapporo station is the JR Tower. You can go to the 38th floor to get a look out over Sapporo.
Love playing around with the camera. Even if I'm not very good! Had to be a little stealthy with this one or I'd have kept the glare off the left side. This is bouncing off some marble walling facing the window.
Any who, good night! Might not be a post tomorrow as I'm heading to Sendai. When coming to Sapporo I really didn't think how far north it actually is. 8 Hour train ride is one of the shorter options from here. There's a couple over night trains but I figured it would be better to just go for it and make it to Sendai around 5 to 6 PM.