Hokkaido, Japan the northern Island off the mainland and our train trip to Sapporo the catpial of Hokkaido

The Marina we are staying at in Tomakomai on the island of Hokkaido, Japan and the welcoming committee. We were the first foreign boats to come to this marina. They came to take pictures, and give out flowers to the boats. The next day there was an article in the local newspaper.

Most of the menu's are in Japanese, like this one, but they have lots of picutres once you get the menu's. It is still difficult to order anything other then the exact picture

We were so surprised with all the plastic food that was in all the windows. It was amazing that it looked so real.

plastic sushi and plastic ice cream so you could decide by seeing if you could not read Japanese

In Sapporo the captial of Hokkaido, they ride bicycles, and as you can see the bicycle parking lot is packed with them. Most lots are so full I do not know how you would find your bicycle.

Downtown Sapporo

The TV Tower is one of their famous sight seeing items, we rode up to the observation floor and took some pictures of Sapporo.

Not sure what it says in the road, but probably something like yield or stay in your lane in the tunnel, I just liked the Japanese writing in the street.

Even the sewer covers are artistic this one has the clock tower and a fish

Sapporo Factory entrance and the mutton bbq, where you cook your food over a small propane fired wok like pan on your table

The Sapporo Beer Museum



Kirt, Wayne & Bill tasting the beer at the Sapporo beer museum

The buildings and gardens at the beer museum now have restaurants and shops in them

The pay phones are bright lime green, I had to take a picture because they were so different

So far all the restaurants have been great, this is the ramen noodle restaurant that we ate at, and it was so far my favorite place we have eaten.

As you can see it was very crowded.

McDonalds........this and KFC are the only fast food restaurants we have seen so far.

The subway station was right at the train station

This was he hotel we stayed at in Sapporo, it is part of the Monterey group, The Edelhof Sapporo, I would recommend a stay here as we enjoyed it very much. Our room was on the 18th floor so we had a great view of Sapporo

This is the North / South dividing line in Sapporo

It was even difficult to get iced tea or a cold drink from a vending machine, the only one in english in the machine was welch's grape, but we could get water.

This was a big event with musical groups playing during the event, they were set up in tents and had vendors selling things, just like at home

In the city we did not see many of the woman in the traditional Kimono's, but here is one, and we did see a few others, but I did not get their pictures.