Just a Little Bit(ch)

Back from dealing with buffet sensou with yelling Chinese tourists in Noboribetsu.  Figured going to a less-known property would be a safer bet against the throngs of foreign tourists, but apparently where we went was specifically marketing themselves toward the package foreign market.  Onsen itself was not bad, though the scenery was lame, and the baths themselves set in the concrete industrial underside of the hotel.  Had some good gyutan for lunch in a new place in the basement of JR Sapporo-eki, North of the Mexican restaurant.  Dinner was at an unremarkable ramen-ya.  Organic, but not all that good.  If you like niboshi-based broth, you’ll like it, but if you lean more toward chicken bone or pork bone bases, you’ll find it painfully fishy.  I guess I’m not too upset I forgot both my camera and phone in the rush to get dinner.  It’s in Maruyama, around the corner from the second location that Bozu was in before he went under.  The place screams, “former salaryman with a dream to open a ramen restaurant”.  There was a centimeter or two of new snow in town, so that might be enough to get me motivated to catch the bus out to Kokusai tomorrow.