Hokkaido trip - Oct 2016 (Day 1)

Last year I came to Hokkaido in early Nov, but this year we decided to return slightly earlier to try enjoying a milder weather, since my parents were also coming together in this family trip. Unlike many of my recent trips, our flight was in fact very smooth, without any delay from push-back, taxiing and take off, and it was a pleasant flight arriving earlier than expected.

Like last time I rented a 7-seater for the trip, allowing us more flexibility and comfort in going around. The weather was quite good with sunshine, dry and cool, and it took me about 75 minutes before arriving at ANA Sapporo Hotel, located at the convenient spot very near to JR Sapporo Station. Luckily for us also, there was only 2-3 parking spaces left in the hotel when we arrived.

The room is very small as expected for hotels in Japan, though it is clean and tidy. I also like the services as all the staff are very friendly and helpful. I tried to get their help in booking the restaurants, and because it was full and they tried to help us by checking how long we might need to wait on stand-by so we could decide whether to go or not. And they apologised profusedly also for not able to get the table for us in the end.

After walking for a few minutes we arrived at Kani Honke, the restaurant famous for crabs. Since we need to wait for about one hour before our table is available we decided to go to Daimaru, the department store opposite. No longer in business in HK, it brought back some good memories for us, as we used to go there frequently when I was young.

At the supermarket we had found an interesting 'soup ingredient', looking like dried seaweed plus some other vegetable. The saleslady just added some hot water, and after a minute or so, it became a tasty seaweed broth which is frankly very good. We immediately bought a few packs to take back home, which would be good as the broth for preparing some udon or noodle.

Returning to Kani Honke, the first interesting thing for me is of course the pool where all the live crabs were resting. It took us another 10 minutes or so before getting our room, showing how good the business is with the restaurant having a few floors in total. The room we got was nice in size for the four of us, and good for chit-chat while having plenty of space to put all the different dishes.

As you might expect I went for the biggest set menu available, the Kin no Mai, including

1. 5 types of appetizers
2. King crab dressed with sauce
3. Crab sashimi on drift ice
   
   
4. Vinegar king crab and hairy crab
5. Fried king crab claw
6. King crab steak
7. King crab and snow crab Kani Suki
8. Rice porridge with crab meat
9. Tsukemono 
10. Fruit (melon)

The quality of the crab and portion are all very good. In fact when compared with the other two crab restaurants I tried last year this one is much better. No wonder why there are so many customers, and there are also a lot of Japanese too so it is not just for tourists. The set menu costs 13500 yen but I still think it is worth trying.

OK, that's enough for the night, let's check out my day 2 recap tomorrow!