Hokkaido-the most delicious place on the earth

So I have a week break right now for Golden week, which is week that a good amount of the population gets off of work, aside from certain restaurants, workaholics, etc. Not sure of the origins of this holiday, but most Japanese are overworked anyway and could use a nice break, so I say that's reason enough. Anyway, I went to Hokkaido, the northernmost of the four main islands, with my host family for about 3 days. The thing is, though, the entire reason we went up there was to eat. Hokkaido is especially known for its fresh seafood, namely crab, ikura(salmon eggs) and uni. But seriously, everything is super fresh and tasty. Now, my host dad normally rolls pretty hard when it comes to food, but on this trip we reached a whole new level of decadence. It almost felt like we were constantly eating, and don't recall ever feeling not stuffed the entire trip. So after landing in New Chitose airport, we waited a bit to get the rental car and then sped off to Sapporo to try and make it to our 1:30 reservation at this supposedly outrageously delicious sushi place (and the place closes at 2pm). Sapporo apparently likes to put stoplights every two feet on the main drag, so we got there around 1:40, but luckily they were nice, still seated us and even stayed open until 2:30 so we got to eat at a semi-leisurely pace. And this was some delicious stuff. Shrimp, squid, saba, salmon just to name a few, but my favorite is by far fatty tuna, I think I put away about 6 of those little buggers. On top of all the sushi we clam miso soup, along with a Hokkaido specialty uni-ikura donburi, which is basically a bunch of ikura and uni thrown on top of some rice. It may sound deceivingly simple, but the point is to appreciate the deliciousness of the fresh seafood. And this specialty dish is rather top-tier in terms of delicacies. A modest sized bowl runs about $25. After that we just wandered around a shopping center trying to find me new shoes. My shoes had severe holes in them, and after seeing the prices of shoes in Japan, I had decided to tough it out until returning to America. That is until my host mom let slip the terrible condition of my shoes to host dad, at which point it was pretty much decided that I would be getting new shoes. After going to a couple stores, and not being able to find shoes big enough for me, we finally found a pair. The length on the other shoes wasn't the problem, it was the width. They were all too narrow. Sometimes I forget how big I am the the 'Japan scale' so to speak.
We stopped at a local cafe for dessert, and I had this parfait that had chocolate ice cream on the bottom, but then this really weird frozen pudding on top that had a very strange texture but was also quite tasty. Then the mac daddy of dinners. We were going out for crab, and my host dad had this specific style in which he wanted it prepared. After wandering around trying to find our restaurant, we finally arrive and have a about five ladies in kimono greet us at the entrance. So already it feels like a fancy place. We walk past this glass case in which there is a mammoth crab just sort of chilling, waiting to be eaten. We get to our little room only to find out what my host dad wants isn't on the menu. So he tries haggling with the waitress to see if the chefs can do it up special. She seems a bit unnerved by that and fetches who I assume is a manager of sorts. So he asks her about the mammoth crab out there, and if they could prepare it half grilled/cooked and half raw sashimi style. After consulting the chefs and thinking about, she decides they can, but it'll run just shy of $400, to which my host dad, without thinking twice, says 'okay, let's do that.' To a certain extent I thought I was getting used to how my host dad throws around money, but I was once again flabbergasted. And it was good and everything, but there was so much of it, I don't think I ever want to see crab again.
　We head back to the hotel, and decided to take Yugo to a game center (arcade), but it is nighttime in one of the less elegant parts of downtown and the arcade won't let children in that late, so we dropped Yugo back off at the hotel. My host dad then decided we should go to a hostess club. This is similar to what I mentioned back in my Kyoto post. You pay money to drink and chit-chat with pretty young ladies done up in fancy dresses. I have decided I am not a big fan of these. I don't particularily like idle chat in the first place, plus the whole concept of 'I'm paying to talk with you' just makes for an uncomfortable premise in my opinion. Anyway, about a half hour through, my host dad sees a closed off room and asks what that is. 'Oh, that's the VIP room, it costs more, but has karaoke, etc, etc. ' 'Well hey, why don't go over there!' And so we head to the VIP room and sing karaoke for the next hour or two until the place closes. My host dad asks the two ladies if they know of any good ramen places and invites them to join us for ramen. So the four of us grab a midnight snack, and I had some out of this world miso ramen. After taking care of cab fare for both the ladies, we took cab back to the hotel. And that was just day one...to be continued.