The next day we woke up fairly early, no worse for wear, and headed out to our next stop, Maruyama Park. Many people had gone to the Maruyama Zoo that morning, but Cormac and I were not really in the mood to go see the zoo, so instead we went to go see a few Shinto shrines on one end of the park.
While walking around the park there were lots of little snowmen that had been built and placed along bridge railings and in tree stumps, on branches, and on the ground. There were dozens and dozens of mini snowmen everywhere we walked. So cute!
At this shrine a mom was trying to pray and her little boy was wandering around with his little shovel and getting in the way. She had to get him down from the steps of the shrine before she could finish her prayer. It was totally cute to watch.
Here are a few more shrines we saw.
We finally came to the big shrine on the park grounds there were a lot of people there praying and buying omamori (good luck charm.)
I didn’t need any more omamori, but I did end up buying one that I thought was especially sweet. It shows two rabbits holding one end of a red string. The red string is a fairly popular story in East Asian mythology. It says that soul mates are connected by an invisible, red string (how it can be both invisible and red I don’t know.) Because they are connected, they will always be able to find one another in this world, even if they are on opposite sides of the planet. Some say that it is inevitable that they find each other. It appeals to the romantic in me, so I couldn’t help but buy it.
At the shrine there were a lot of people wearing traditional kimono, and some of them were quite fancy. I took a few pictures of people.
I love the coats that these girls were wearing, and the decorations in their hair.
We wasted some more time around the park after that.
You can see how deep the snow was in this park. Cormac is standing on top of packed snow above this bridge.
You can see the ice and snow on top of this river, as well as the holes where you can see the river flowing beneath and where ice has not been able to form.
I made a little snowman and put it in a tree. There was also this monument that we passed as we were leaving the park.
We then made our way over to our next stop, The Shiroi Koibito (White Boyfriend/Girlfriend) cookie and chocolate factory. These sweets are very famous in japan, and if you go on vacation to Hokkaido, and more specifically Sapporo, the cookies from this factory are the omiyage that everyone wants you to bring back.
We met up with most of the people from our group, and we made an appointment to decorate cookies of our own. But in the meantime, we walked around the building and checked out what they had to show. Most of the building is a museum. It shows old tea sets and advertisements (mostly French ones) for chocolate and candies.
There is also this chocolate walkway where they show you the process of making chocolate using little animatronics. The hallway was quite dark so I wasn’t able to take any photos of the animatronics, but I was able to take a picture of the wall on the way out.
They also had a walkway above the factory where you can look down and see the employees making and examining the cookies before they package them up and sell them.
I also had to go to the restroom while I was there, and while it may seem strange that I'm about to say it, just look at how beautiful this toilet and sink are! I hear the men's bathroom looked the same but the toilet and sink were blue instead of pink.
Finally it was our turn to go decorate our cookies. They gave us each a white tube of frosting that was included with our cookie purchase, and we all pitched and extra 150 yen to get some extra colors of frosting. I made this cookie.
My friend Naomi went full artist and made this design.
And Cormac drew a dick on his. XD
After we finished decorating our cookies we went outside to check out the lights and small houses that dot the yard outside.
It was a pretty sight, and we were having a lot of fun when another surprise hit us, the clock struck 4 and panels started sliding away on the outside of the factory, and you could see animatronic figures popping out. The speakers started playing a tune and the animatronics started “singing.” It was then that I realized that the animatronics were not only on the building, but also popping out of the ground and trashcans. Everything was moving! After about 3 minutes the song stopped and the animatronics were hidden again.
We went inside where some people bought omiyage. I went over to a side room and watched some people making hard candy. The candy was soft so they were able to roll it around while they created a design in it. They were also able to stretch it out so they could cut it into little pieces.
They also had this PEPPER robot in the lobby that you could interact with.
Up a staircase above the shop, there is an old toy museum. It had toys from every decade of the last 100 years. Some of them were kind of creepy, and I loved them, and some I remembered myself from the 1990’s and 2000’s.
One of my favorites was this Michael Jackson doll.
There was also this helpful sign.
We came upon a short hallway that had this interesting sculpture:
And one that had a little recreation of the Mouth of Truth in Italy.
We went outside afterward and the sun had set and the sky was getting dark, so all the trees and little houses were illuminated and it was beautiful.
We took this opportunity to crawl inside some of the tiny houses and take some photos.
In this house there were four older ladies hanging out and talking.
Cormac and I were getting hungry by this point, so we decided to stop at a little restaurant on the way back. We wanted to try the other food that Sapporo is famous for: Curry Soup. It was spicy and delicious. I would definitely recommend you try it.
We made our way back to the hotel after that, and met up with Jojo, Felipe and Chais. From there we walked around the city, bar hopping along the way.
On the way back to the hotel we stumbled upon this little temple and shrine in the middle of the city.
This one had a small shrine off to the side that had some carvings of foxes and komainu. The komainu were painted blue, so it was rather unusual in that regard.
We continued back to the hotel and crashed. We had more big plans the next day.
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