21 September 2026
Today was our Sapporo city tour day, and we spent most of it around the central shopping districts, with plenty of food in between.
We started in the morning at Tanukikoji Shopping Arcade, walking through the arcade and taking our time exploring some of the malls and shops connected to it. It was quite full, although not yet uncomfortably crowded, which was probably partly because we were still in the Silver Week holiday period. I did wonder whether Tanukikoji feels noticeably quieter outside the Japanese holiday periods.
Tanukikoji is much more than just a convenient shopping street. It is one of Hokkaido’s oldest shopping districts, with its origins going back to the early development of Sapporo during the Meiji period. Shops and restaurants began appearing around what are now Tanukikoji 2-chome and 3-chome around 1869, and the name Tanukikoji was being used by about 1873. Today, the covered arcade stretches for roughly 900 metres across seven blocks, with around 200 shops.
The covered arcade is particularly useful in Sapporo. The current main arcade covering 1-chome to 6-chome dates from 1982, while the original covered sections were gradually introduced from 1958. So even though the shopping street now has plenty of modern shops, its role as a commercial centre in Sapporo is considerably older than it first appears.
Eventually, though, we discovered that the bulk of our shopping happened somewhere completely different: Daimaru Fujii Central.
This is one of those shops where it is very easy to spend much longer than expected. It is a large specialist stationery store spread across several floors, covering everything from everyday stationery and notebooks to fountain pens, leather goods, art supplies, Japanese paper, craft materials and character goods. The store says it carries around 200,000 kinds of stationery, so for anyone who enjoys stationery, this is practically a shopping destination in its own right.
Its history is also quite interesting. The business traces its beginnings to Senzo Fujii, who moved to Sapporo from Shiga in 1892 and began selling goods before expanding into paper and stationery. By the early twentieth century, the business had become an important paper wholesaler in Sapporo. The present building dates from 1989, but the business itself has been part of the city’s commercial life for well over a century.
The first four floors are the main shopping area, with stationery and miscellaneous goods on the first floor, stationery and writing instruments on the second, art materials on the third, and paper, craft and Japanese-style goods on the fourth.
So yes, this was where we somehow ended up doing most of our shopping.
A Crab Lunch at Hyousetsu no Mon
After that, it was time for our lunch reservation at Hyousetsu no Mon.
There was a sign saying that the restaurant was fully booked for the day. It was lucky that we had made our reservation a week or two earlier through the reservation site, otherwise we would probably have been out of luck.
Hyousetsu no Mon specialises in crab cuisine and offers both lunch and dinner. The dinner menus apparently have more choices and some more premium options, but since I am not a particularly big fan of crab and my companion was the one more interested in the experience, lunch made more sense for us.
Lunch also gave us the flexibility to order a set course and add a few other dishes for us to share. The restaurant has private rooms, which made the meal comfortable and fairly quiet. The only downside is that, as with many private-room Japanese restaurants, you sometimes need to be a little patient after ringing the bell and waiting for the server to come.
Our dining time was limited to 1 hour 45 minutes. That sounded reasonably generous at first, but the course was deliberately served one dish at a time, so by the time we had finished the main course it was already about an hour and 15 minutes. We did not linger particularly long anyway. That is not really our style.
The lunch course was a parade of different crab preparations: chawan mushi with plenty of crab, a salad with snow crab, grilled king crab, crab croquette, crab sushi and other dishes. The restaurant’s current lunch menu similarly features crab-rich chawan mushi, grilled taraba crab, snow crab dishes, crab croquette and crab sushi, although menus can change seasonally.
We also ordered roasted king crab sushi and crab porridge separately, mainly because there were simply too many interesting things on the menu to stop at the set course.
Our verdict? Between the crabs we tried, we preferred the snow crab to the king crab. The snow crab had the texture we liked more.
My companion, meanwhile, had another opinion altogether: the blue-green crab we get in Malaysia tastes better as meat.
Can’t argue with a foodie.
We also had some sake with the meal. It was on the sweeter side and went rather nicely with the seafood, but perhaps we enjoyed it a little too well. By the time lunch was over, we were both pretty intoxicated.
So we walked back to the hotel and went to sleep.
I have to say, drinking alcohol this early in the day really throws off our rhythm. We were drowsy for much of the rest of the day. But sometimes the occasion calls for it.
Back to Tanukikoji for Parfait
After waking up, we went back towards Tanukikoji again. It really is a huge shopping area, and even after spending much of the morning there, there were still plenty of shops we had not properly looked through.
We also bought some Hokkaido tomatoes.
That turned out to be one of the best purchases of the day. We ate them at night and honestly, they were so sweet and juicy. Just perfect.
The previous day, we had also tried to get a parfait, but the queue was too long. So this time we decided to go early, before the shop even opened, and ended up being the first customers.
We went to Parfaiteria PaL, one of Sapporo’s well-known night-parfait shops.
The shop is associated with the Sapporo-style shime parfait, the idea of finishing a night out with a carefully made parfait. Rather than being a simple bowl of ice cream and fruit, these are constructed almost like individual desserts, with different textures, flavours and temperatures layered into a glass.
PaL is particularly recognisable by its tapir motif. Naturally, my companion immediately pointed out that the tapir is an animal strongly associated with Malaysia, and I am apparently obligated to mention this.
The parfait itself was beautiful. We chose one featuring seasonal grapes, which made sense for September. The current seasonal menu includes grape-based parfaits, with fresh grapes combined with different creams, gelato, jelly, crumble and other components.
At around ¥3,000, it is definitely not a cheap dessert. But the amount of work that goes into one is obvious. Each parfait is assembled with numerous individual components, and the presentation makes it look more like a small piece of edible artwork than an ordinary dessert.
The flip side is that it takes some work to actually eat it.
You cannot simply dig straight down with a spoon and expect everything to make sense. We had to deconstruct the parfait as we went along, working through the different layers and components.
Taste-wise, it was not bad at all, but personally, I still prefer something simpler. Still, it was an experience, and considering our hotel was so close, I would have felt a little remiss coming all this way and not trying it.
An Evening Around Sapporo Station
After that, we went back to the hotel for another rest, still feeling the effect of our lunchtime sake.
In the evening, we decided to take the subway to Sapporo Station because I thought it might be interesting to experience what the area was like at night.
The verdict was that there was surprisingly little nightlife around the station compared with what we had been seeing elsewhere in central Sapporo. If nightlife is what you are after, Susukino is a much more obvious place to base yourself. Susukino has historically developed as Sapporo’s main entertainment district, while the Sapporo Station area is much more oriented towards transport, department stores, offices and shopping.
That does not mean there is nowhere to eat around Sapporo Station. We found a few izakaya that were quite lively.
I had originally wanted to try one particular place after seeing its reviews on Google, but there was already a short queue outside. Luckily, the shop next door looked full but still had some seats, so we managed to squeeze ourselves in.
The service was friendly, and we enjoyed the baked potatoes and zangi chicken. The sashimi platter, however, turned out to be a little too much for us after everything we had already eaten that day.
And after that, we called it a day.
It had turned into a surprisingly food-heavy shopping day: stationery, Ghibli goods, Hokkaido tomatoes, several kinds of crab, sake, a very elaborate parfait and finally an izakaya dinner. Not a bad way to spend a day exploring central Sapporo.
Getting Around Sapporo
For this kind of city day, the subway is convenient for moving between Sapporo Station, Odori, Tanukikoji and Susukino. Tanukikoji itself is also easy to explore on foot, and its covered arcade makes it particularly practical when the weather is poor.
Daimaru Fujii Central is about a two-minute walk south from Odori Station Exit 12, while Hyousetsu no Mon is around four minutes on foot from Susukino Station. Parfaiteria PaL is also within walking distance of Susukino and Hosui-Susukino stations.
For popular crab restaurants and night-parfait shops, booking or checking the latest admission arrangements in advance is worthwhile, particularly during Japanese holiday periods. Our experience with the fully booked crab restaurant and the previous day’s parfait queue made that fairly clear.
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