Our hotel in Sapporo, Rembrandt Style, has been frustrating for us. It looks good online and they offer parking. When we arrived, we could see that this shiny new hotel is not located in a good area... it is in what was the Red Light District of Sapporo and there has been an effort to change this focus, but there is a way to go. We wanted our trikes to be parked in a secure spot but the attitude of the hotel was very negative. The only offer they made was to park on the street which we refused. Barry persevered and tried to find a solution…a large room off the lobby that was empty…”no”, parking garage…”no” and so on. It is so frustrating to deal with a person who cannot think outside the box. Barry was so annoyed with the man’s lack of interest. The next problem was that our room was so small that we had to take turns if you wanted to move. The next day, Barry tried again to find a solution for our trikes as it had rained hard through the night and today would be more of the same. The clerk said to put them in our room, to which Barry thought…have you seen your rooms? There isn’t even room for our luggage. We gave up.
So, off we went to explore. We want to return to the Outdoor Store and make a decision about a tent.
One can not remain in a bad mood in Japan with cute animal figures everywhere.
It is hard to choose as two large parks are filled with food stalls and they all look good. The rain has slowed down their business, but shortly the crowds will come.
We finally made it to the Outdoor Shop and we had our choices narrowed down to 3 different tents, all made in Japan. This was the first one we looked at.
Choice #2. We are so impressed by the quality and durability of these tents which are incredibly light weight. We really liked this one. Barry is very tall and he can easily sit up in it.
Lightweight, free standing tents like these models in Japan have a design of 2 poles that cross over each other giving more width and height to the tent. The process is so fast…you simply feed each pole through its sleeve, secure the ends of the poles and your tent is ready for the fly and staking. One person can easily set up the tent in a few minutes. Our new tent is made by Ripen, is called the Trek Rai and weighs about 3.5 lbs, has 2 good sized vestibules.
Katuo is a tent specialist at the store Shugakuso and he is also a recumbent rider. His help in our choice was greatly appreciated.
Suzuki specializes in sleeping bags and he helped us find the right sleeping bags, also super light and made in Japan. We are very surprised that these high quality products are sold for reasonable prices….considerably better than what we would have to pay in Canada.
Barry BartlettThere is a second location of this store in Sapporo, south of this one. In that The ground floor of that location is dedicated to cycling and the fourth floor to rock climbing. If you shop there, have your passport with you as they will immediately discount it to be tax free. Reply to this comment 10 months ago
We found a wonderful bookstore that has been in Sapporo since 1925. They had a wonderful selection of books in English…the first we have found so far. This Manga book is based on a beloved series of 3 novels. We bought this to bring home.
Today's ride: 22 km (14 miles) Total: 1,552 km (964 miles)
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Karen BrownThanks for your blog. Would you mind sharing your budget (I'm Canadian)? We are looking at doing this trip next spring. Curious to see how you like camping in Japan. We were thinking that we may bring our gear. Reply to this comment 10 months ago
