After spending most of the day making it as far as the kitchen and then falling asleep again we finally made it into Sapporo in the evening. We went up the Sapporo TV tower at one end of Odori park to see the sun go down over the mountains.
Sapporo is huge (2 million people) and stretches off into the haze in every direction. The TV tower itself was pretty much 3 levels of insane gift shop, which often blocked the better views. It was nice to look down on Odori Park which is a mile long strip of gardens, festival stages, and play park ending with the Clock Building, which is the sort of first municipal building in this very young city and where all the postal areas are measured from. Like an American city everything is laid out in a grid, which can make walks frustrating as you can see where you are going forever but never seem to arrive. Odori Park is sort of a roof to the great underground network of shopping centre, which exists to help ordinary life continue in the harsh winter with enough snow for a festival.
We walked up and down the length of it and in that time I spotted one single piece of litter - and I was looking hard. The culture of queuing, being clean and tidy, and amazing manners is impressive.
Hokkaido is also the agricultural heart of Japan and it is famous for its flower fields. This explained the beautiful displays up and down the park, which were as pungent as they were beautiful.
We had a very cheap Japanese version of pizza when we got back to Asabu station before trudging back in a warm breeze and attempting to watch some Japanese TV with the house before going to bed.
At some point I will figure out how to upload my photos and show you.
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