Sapporo Hokkaido on a Budget: Susukino Streetcar & Ralse Market Sushi
Travel · Published 7/4/2024 ·
We checked into our place and… well, “unpacking” is a bit of a stretch when all you do is drop a backpack on the floor. With that done, it was time to actually look around — do a bit of sightseeing, and pick up something for dinner. At first I just wandered off with no real plan, but then I pulled up Google Maps and searched for a supermarket, and that’s how I learned there are a ton of Ralse markets all over Hokkaido.
That TV tower keeps showing up everywhere when you travel in Sapporo. Its official Korean name is the Sapporo TV Tower…
We passed through the big shopping street just north of Susukino.
This is the entrance to an underground shopping arcade — and at this point I still had no idea there was a massive shopping complex down there. I just thought, “Huh, they’ve set this up so it’s easy to walk your bike down,” and snapped a quick photo. That was the extent of it…
The signs of Susukino…
Hokkaido has its Nikka man.
I found it really fascinating that there was even a Ferris wheel up on a rooftop. And a FamilyMart, too…
When I first saw this… wait, wait?? A streetcar! It was so cool. The outer loop runs newer cars, while the inner loop is still operated with the older models — and it’s a form of public transport that locals actually use a lot. Korea seems to be trying to introduce something similar under the name “tram.”
A Cleanstar laundry chain…
The streetcar track runs down the middle of the road, with regular cars driving on either side. But it doesn’t cause traffic jams or anything — everyone just dodges each other nicely and keeps moving along… The part you can see up on the left is a streetcar stop.
At last, the Ralse market we’d been looking for… I wanted to get a taste of what the locals actually eat. An incredible selection of highballs and beers… so many varieties — different alcohol percentages, fruit flavors, you name it — that it looked like you could pick whatever suited your taste.
Since it was our first night, I grabbed six highballs… four cans of beer… and some sushi marked 20% off, and then headed back. The market was quite a distance away, so we decided to take the streetcar on the way home. The fare is 200 yen, so for two people that’s roughly 4,000 won — but the distance from Susukino to that Ralse market was no joke, so we didn’t really have a choice.
This was a little past 8 p.m. The locals mostly do their grocery shopping before 6, so the discounts are nice and all… but if you’re not careful, the sushi will be gone, so you have to watch out for that. This gets even more pronounced the farther you go into the countryside. Show up late and there’s nothing left to eat. Honestly, getting there on time seems better than chasing the discount.
We had no reason to ride the outer loop…
So we waited for the inner loop. You don’t have to wait long — they come by quite frequently. The stop in the middle is pretty narrow, so it looks like you really need to mind your safety there.
We boarded here and rode the inner loop one stop past Susukino to Tanukikoji. Getting to sit down — pure heaven.
200 yen for an adult…
The inside… was neither more nor less than the streetcar that used to run through Gwanghwamun, the one I’d seen at the railway museum. I even felt like the width was the same. A narrow-gauge train…
It’s old, but everything works just fine. You can tell it’s well maintained and still in service…
We bought Suntory highballs, tuna, sushi, and onigiri, and ate it all back at our place. I’d looked into a few restaurants around downtown Sapporo, but… the grill spots were cramped and pricey, packed with people, and if you didn’t have a reservation they wouldn’t take foreigners… and so on. The list of inconveniences just kept going.
A pack of sushi runs about 400 to 800 yen… to convert to Korean prices, you can roughly multiply by 0.85. As of June 2024… an absolute steal…
There’s no way you can hit a fancy restaurant every single day, so we decided to handle brunch and snacks at ordinary places — not fancy, just your average family restaurant or one of the eateries inside a department store — and for dinner, since you’re going to have a drink anyway, it felt better to keep it relaxed, so we sourced most of it from the supermarket.
That worked out to about 2,500 to 3,000 won per meal for two people. And that’s the average including transportation, so yes, the weak yen helps — but it’s crystal clear that prices in Korea have genuinely gone insane, hahaha.
The food was, of course, better than you’d expect. It was so good it doesn’t even compare to the sushi sold at supermarkets back home. But a supermarket is still a supermarket. I’ll post about it later, but the sushi we had in Otaru was truly outstanding — though the sushi from Ralse market was excellent value for money too.
That’s our penny-pinching overseas trip — the first evening in Sapporo, Hokkaido.
Thank you.
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