Japan Trip 2023: Hokkaido University and Botanic Gardens

Despite my feet still being a bit sore from yesterday's 22,000 step walk around Sapporo, I decided to go out again to do a little shopping at the wonderful Daimaru department store. Japanese department stores are very interesting - they are more or less a throwback to how department stores were once operated in North America. There are over six floors of merchandise in the Sapporo Daimaru store, there is actually well-trained and attentive staff, and the store is exceedingly well-maintained. All that I bought was a wallet that was on sale and I was treated like royalty. It's sad to consider how department stores in Canada have either disappeared, become completely irrelevant, or are just sad carbon-copies of places like Zellers and Walmart. For example, the Hudson's Bay store in Regina should just close. It's now down to two floors of merchandise, there are no staff, the store is falling to pieces, and most of the doors to the street have been sealed shut since the pandemic. Sad. Not here in Japan though.

I then moved on to the campus of Hokkaido University. This is another place that I had been to sixteen years ago and I was once again surprised by how my memory of the place has not held up all that well over the years. I do recall that it was a beautiful campus but I could not recall exactly how it looked (even with the help of old pictures). When I arrived at the campus I was once again impressed by what a peaceful and beautiful place it is.

From the main campus, it was a bit of a walk to the other side of campus where the beautiful botanic gardens are located. I made my way up there and was not disappointed by the incredible beauty that surrounded me. It was once again great to get deep into nature in the middle of a city.

At one spot I came across the "Canadian Rock Garden" display. This is something that I saw the last time that I was here. Once again though my memory of this from 2007 was not even close to what I saw today. It's amazing how inaccurate one's memory is over the long term. The Canadian Rock Garden could perhaps be a fair representation of a small section of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta or British Columbia.

The rose garden was great. The smell of roses here was absolutely incredible. I could have spent all afternoon among the roses.

Around the rose garden there were a number of other beautiful flowers growing from lilies to some others that I have no idea what they are. Bees were working hard.

From the rose garden, I took a fork in the road and made my way back to the entrance. What a relaxing way to spend this afternoon. I'm really glad that I walked all the way down here.