Hokkaido Trip: Sapporo Factory

Day 2, Part 2.

(Austin)

    After buying stuff, taking pictures and freezing my hands off at the Yuki Matsuri Odor Site, we headed towards a mall called Sapporo Factory. I wanted to go to Sapporo Factory because I read on the internet that there was a special event being held there related to Snow Miku stuff. Snow Miku is my favorite Hatsune Miku variant, so I was excited to go.

    After taking a train and walking through the snow covered sidewalk we finally arrived at the mall. Good thing too because I was FREEZING. We went inside and started looking

for the event. The mall was huge and had many different shops. We briefly stopped in a puzzle shop to look around. I really want to get an anime puzzle however I Dont think it will look good hanging up. The ridges between thepieces make it look...kinda bad.

    After exploring the puzzle shop we continued our search. We looked through a lot of the mall before I decided that maybe it was in the building beside the mall. We walked over there and DID find something similar but it wasnt what we were looking for. The event we found was an anniversary party for a company called Shaft; They make high quality anime.

    Not to be detered we wandered back to the mall. In the middle of the mall was a wide open space with a few restaurants and shrubbery. Sadly I didn't really get any pictures but I've not really seen anything like it in the US. Ryosuke called the Mall help line to see where the event was and that is when we were told... the event was over. It had ended the previous day before we had even arrived in Hokkaido. "Well.. that sucks" is basically all I could say. 

    Luckily some of the restaurants were still doing their Snow Miku themed promotions so we went and had a small snack at one. I got a delicious drink that came with a free drink coaster. Something is better than nothing, right?

    It was starting to get late so we decided to head back, but before we left a small singing talent show started on a little stage. We were on the top floor above it, so we could only barely see it but we listened the whole time. Two girls sang Romeo and Cinderella, one of my favorite Miku songs. The people in Japan are really good at singing.

    We headed back towards our hotel. On the way there we stopped at a tiny ramen shop. It could only hold about 7 people in the whole shop. I had miso ramen again. It was extremely good. We parted ways with Ryosuke after dinner but agreed to meet at the McDonalds in the morning.

    Finally back at the hotel we relaxed and settled in. I finally took some pictures of my capsule. These capsules were much nicer than the ones in Tokyo. They had a TV, headphones, a radio and Elijah's favorite part: cushion. While I didn't have any problems with the beds in the pods in Tokyo, Elijah said they were really uncomfortable to sleep on. Suffice to say these were much better.