Sapporo 2 - CineStill 800T
Driving on the mountains, small villages in the middle of nowhere, a cheap Hilton Hotel in Niseko, and a fancy coffee shop over a late morning lifestyle.
This second film roll during our visit to Sapporo is not as exciting to see as it was to shoot. We mostly drove hours and hours in Sapporo (on the right side of the road, yay!), and took some shots along the way. This film was loaded at night, before coming back to the hotel, which was in Niseko ニセコ町, very far, where Mount Yotei was waiting for us.
Something I noticed is that Japanese lifestyle starts basically after 11 AM. Japanese people usually don’t wake up as early as the rest of the world, but they go to bed late to compensate, that means most of the stores (including coffee shops, argh!) are closed early morning, which is when you most need them!
With the halation effect as nice as it can be, the Hilton Niseko was waiting for us. It was time to rest for the night. The weather on the first day wasn’t very nice, with foggy (but still beautiful) landscapes over the japanese alpes.
The river you see in the picture below is the Toyohira River 豊平川. I was driving and I had to stop for the photo.
These shots remembered me about my friend
, who here on Substack also posts landscape shots, some made with CineStill films, and some in medium format.
This hotel is far away, but the view from the window was gorgeous. If you don’t mind driving (on the right side of the road), the Hilton Niseko Village is an awesome and cheap option, the breakfast is simply the best one I’ve seen in my life. It’s a resort, so I assume that during high-season it gets pricy, but it was like $100/night to me in April.
On the next day, we woke up early and hit the road again, that means another 2 hour drive to the city. My wife is a big k-pop fan, so she finds the location where BTS members did something, like an appearance on a music clip, etc.
That’s how I got dragged to a town in the middle of nowhere, which I took the chance to make some shots.
This is literally in the middle of nowhere in Japan. And there’s something interesting about this cross-subject. Wife brings me to an unknown location, and I made some shots that weren’t possible if I was searching for places to photoshoot over the internet.
After that short visit to that place, I was craving for a coffee, that’s when I typed “coffee near me” in Google Maps, and found a place called B3 COFFEE OTARU. The owner is an awesome Australian guy who married with a Japanese woman, and they both opened one of the best coffee shops I visited in Japan, the quality was incredible and their banana cake topped with melted butter (!) was simply outstanding.
Nothing like a small family business over Japan to make my day better!
After that, we parked our car in a tourist attraction, suggested by this guy above. A street that had lots of cool stores and restaurants.
So far, I had already photographed (and posted here) 15 rolls of film, but I’m craving, I am ready for the next roll! See you on the other side! 🎞️
The color story here is really what film can do.