Hokkaido II Day 10: Ichiran, Royce Town Factory & Susukino

After taking my medicine and sleeping through the night, I felt well enough to bathe at the onsen this morning! 😆

We headed for breakfast at Ichiran Norbesa Mall, just a 3-minute walk away from our hotel. We decided to arrive promptly at the restaurant's 9am opening time on weekends to beat the crowd (it'll be a super long queue otherwise)!

Ichiran at Norbesa Mall

Our efforts were rewarded as there was no queue when we arrived! 🥳 We were very lucky as a queue quickly formed behind us after we had completed our order via the self-ordering kiosk!

No queue when we were ordering! 😆

The Boy is the BIGGEST fan of Ichiran, ever since he had his first taste in Tokyo and later in Nagoya! He was so excited to eat Ichiran again after so many years! The Littlest was just a baby when we visited Nagoya so it was her first Ichiran experience in Japan!

Seated in a row!

We can customise our ramen and ask for additional egg

You can also make requests to the staff using wooden boards

I liked that we can order plain soup for my kids

The kids enjoyed their ramen, with the Boy eating the Littlest's leftovers as she could not finish hers! 😅 

After a very satisfying breakfast, we walked to Odori Station via the underground shopping street and took the subway to Sapporo Station (cost ¥210 per adult, ¥110 per child). 

On arrival, we bought tickets at the ticketing kiosk for the JR train bound for Royce Town Station (cost ¥540 per adult, ¥270 per child). After travelling for about 30 minutes on the local train, we approached a station that stood alone in the middle of nowhere! One cannot help but think that the station had only one purpose, which was it to transport people to Royce Town! 😆 

A board displaying a map of the area

Incredibly, Royce Town Station was not manned by any staff! Everyone who disembarked were all headed to the same place. I had initially planned to walk as the factory wasn't far but was pleased to find a shuttle bus waiting for us at the bus stop. It was a complimentary shuttle service to Royce Town Factory! 😀

Shuttle bus service between Royce Town Station and its factory;
Do check the bus schedule to plan your trip.

The bus dropped us off at the factory, just 5 minutes away.

Royce Cacao & Chocolate Town

We decided to join the Royce Cacao & Chocolate Town Tour at ¥1200 per adult and ¥500 per child.

We stored our winter jackets in the complimentary lockers before embarking on our tour of the factory

After taking the lift up, we arrived at the Cacao Farm Zone where we learnt about Royce's farm in Colombia.

Royce owns their own farm in Columbia

A bird's eye view of the farm

Replica of the cacao fruit in the farm

Visitors can try their hand at preparing the cacao for shipment to Japan

Information on ingredients sourced from all around the world!

Experiencing how heavy a bag of cacao is and the different types of cacao

Next, we headed to the Factory Tour Zone where we learnt the process of turning cacao beans into Royce chocolate!

Interactive screens that help us to visualise how we'd look in the factory uniform

The next part of the tour introduced us to the chocolate-making process.
It was very interesting and interactive!

We also got to experience 'roasting' cacao beans and observing an actual conche that mixes the chocolate evenly

The walkthrough tour was very informative and fun! I enjoyed it a lot and wished I had more time here! 

At the end of the zone, we arrived at the Royce Theatre.

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We watched a short clip about Royce and chocolate-making in the theatre

After the show, the screens actually recede to provide an opening to a room full of games and photo opportunities.

Photos with iconic Royce products!

Life-sized mold versus the chocolate

Walk through of a giant 'machine' that gave us a sense of how the potatochips and biscuits feel when they are coated with chocolate 🍫 

Fun chocolate-themed games for the whole family!

Games for both young and old! 😄

There was also a dispenser giving out complimentary Royce chocolate! Yum! 😋

The games were really fun and engaging! We were pleasantly surprised! ☺️

Just when we thought the tour was over, we walked into Royce Collection Street and Royce Museum filled with various collections and memorabilia!

Collection of chocolate wrappers by Dr Moribe

The collection was so large that it lined the whole hallway

Royce Museum

I love the style of this artist, who was famous for his iconic bright red outlines in his paintings!

The factory was so big that we still have not reached the end! We arrived at the Chocolate Workshop where we could design our own chocolate bar at ¥1500 each! It's super value-for-money because the chocolate bar was huge!

Each chocolate bar can only be designed by 1 person, with the exception of young children who could be accompanied by an adult. To maximise our experience, I bought tickets for 2 chocolate bars and paired the Eldest with the Littlest while my Boy partnered with me.

Chocolate Workshop

Buy tickets from the kiosk next to the lockers (right);
We had to wear an apron, cap and mask

The first step was to collect our ingredients and freshly dispensed liquid chocolate

Next, we had to decorate the chocolate with the ingredients provided before the chocolate hardens!

The kids had a blast and proudly showed off their masterpieces!

It was time to send our decorated chocolates for cooling in the machine

Waiting patiently for our chocolate to ride the conveyor belt to us

The final step was packaging and boxing!

With Royce's collection of chocolate boxes

Most of the chocolate bars were eaten by me because the kids didn't like the nuts (am definitely not complaining 🫢)!

We completed the tour and headed to Royce Town Factory Shop to buy certain "Farm-to-Bar" chocolates only available in that store!

These train containers were exclusive to the store

Bought farm-to-bar chocolates while the family enjoyed hot chocolate in the cafe!

I could not eat any of the chocolates or soft serve ice-cream while we were there because of my sore throat! 😣 I did, however, stock up with boxes and boxes of Royce chocolates because they were so much cheaper in Japan!! 😍 I filled about 2 baskets of products and finished them all in just 3 months when I was back in Singapore! The chocolates were divine! *laughs*

Kids enjoyed playing with the snow and making snow Kuromi outdoors!

Beautiful view of the setting sun! It was time to go!

Everyone had fun at Royce Town Factory, especially the younger two kids who are chocolate lovers like me! 😍🩷

If you have time, you should also visit the Sapporo Beer Museum, as Hokkaido is the birthplace of beer in Japan! 😊

We proceeded to board the shuttle bus back to the station, where we struggled to buy tickets from a very old machine at the gates. The machine only accepted old notes and coins, which was really frustrating! Thankfully we had enough and barely made it for the train (nearly missed it)! 😥  

The gates were an honour-based system as you can tell! 😅

It was dark by the time we returned to Sapporo

At Sapporo Station, we took the subway back to Odori Station and shopped at Pole Town, the underground shopping street.

This shop's Christmas-themed bakes were really cute!

The taiyaki at Parco department store were amazing!

We walked to the end of the street and continued our shopping at Susukino Street, just 10-minute walk from our hotel.

Famous road junction with the Nikka billboard

Wanted to shop at Cocono but decided against it as it was too crowded

We walked back towards our hotel and shopped at Can Do (¥100 store) instead. Gotta love the very favourable exchange rate (¥100 to S$0.90)! So worth it! 🤑

Can Do store near our hotel

We returned to our hotel for onsen and complimentary ramen as usual.

After a long day of shopping, it was time to relax and have a good night's rest!

Continue to >> Hokkaido II Day 11-12: Sapporo Maruyama Zoo, Noria Ferris Wheel & Flight Home
< < Back to Hokkaido II Day 9: Dormy Inn Sapporo, Tanukikoji Street & Odori Park

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