The hearth

So it turns out many of the best food spots in Sapporo are located in the red light district.... I guess it makes sense, they're just catering to people who have worked up an appetite!

Merissa and I were enjoying our holiday in Sapporo.  Everything was covered in white snow and the city glistened at night.  We were looking for dinner and google maps took us further and further into the red light district.  It wasn't exactly a difficult or shocking path we took.  It seems like the red light district of Sapporo is integrated into large parts of the city centre and almost unavoidable if you live in Sapporo.  We found several extremely expensive seafood restaurants that we decided against and considered going back to ramen alley.  As we walked past one of the prettiest Japanese girls I have ever seen (whom I can only assume was working, given she was standing around on a street corner looking at all the guys seductively), we saw an incredibly old looking building.  With the more modern buildings around, this was an old wooden building that seemed completely out of place amongst its surroundings.  We were hungry and looking for dinner.  I wandered up closely to the old building out of curiosity, and saw that it had a menu at the front.  

It turns out this was an old robatayaki restaurant.  Not just any robatayaki restaurant either, it was the oldest one in Sapporo.  It was an accidental discovery by us, but what an incredible find it was.

Inside, decades of smoke had left its mark. The walls and roof were covered in a thick and dark layer of black soot.  There was an unavoidable smell of smoke, and the whole place felt old in both a charmingly rustic way, as well as in a decrepit way.  At the hearth in the middle of the restaurant, there were old ladies who were carefully tending to the dishes being cooked.  We were sat down and began ordering.  We were novices, so we took recommendations as well as looking at what others were ordering.  Everything that arrived was incredible.  It was as expected, seafood heavy, but cooked with care and the rich smoky flavour you would expect in a place like this.  Most surprising was the smoked fish that we ordered.  It looked dried out, with each fish hanging from the rafters.  They took each fish down and grilled it on the fire, and somehow this smoked and grilled fish still retained a lovely moistness to it.  

We left the restaurant full and content.  The streets off to the side of the main roads and streets were treacherous and icy.  The main streets had underground heating which kept the ice melted, but here we got a better understanding of just how cold it was.  We slid around, trying our best to not fall as we moved back towards the safety of the heated roads.

Sapporo was lovely at night.  The lights shone bright in the city as buildings were illuminated and people rushed from eatery to eatery.