Am I the only one who wonders why Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco is such a boring place? I mean, here you have one of the most famous chocolate brands in the world, Ghirardelli Chocolate, but where’s the fanciful factory? The Oompa Loompas? The lickable wallpaper? What could have been a magical, Willy Wonka experience, is basically a middling, brick shopping complex, with one moderately-sized restaurant/chocolate shop, and not much else. Magical it is not.
You can bet the Japanese wouldn’t miss such an opportunity, and boy have they not! Sapporo’s Shiroi Kobito Park is Charlie’s chocolate factory come alive with a VERY Japanese/Las Vegas aesthetic.
Shiroi Koibito, which translates to “white lover,” is a particular, white-chocolate-filled cookie originated by the Ishiya Company in 1976. Wildly popular in Japan, the cookie led its creators to concoct a wild, family-friendly chocolate experience around its signature product. Their website says it best:
“Passing through the gate, you’ll find yourself in a world of sweet scents and sweets. Like traveling through a foreign town straight out of a picture book, it’s a theme park where you can fully experience the world filled with sweets you dreamed of as a child. In this place, you are the protagonist today.
While your heart flutters with the charm of sweets, why not fall even more in love with them with your whole body and soul?”
Why not indeed?
Shiroi Kobito Park is, in a word, bonkers… in a good way. The main grounds are free to enter and worth a visit all on their, with their vast flower garden, childen’s playground, and Frankenstein’s monster mish mash of Western architectural elements – a little Bavarian, a little Tutor, a little Victorian with a steam-punk vibe thrown in. To add to the vaguely twee atmosphere of it all, an English double-decker bus and an old, red, British telephone box greet you as you enter.
Yes, there’s an hourly clock/puppet show. Of course there is.
After taking in the grounds, you are then faced with a choice: buy a ticket for the self-guided “Chocotopia” factory tour, or sign up for one of the pricey interactive experience – ie. chocolate tasking or cookie making. I opt for the cut-rate $5 walking factory, which ends up being quite a bargain!
I start in the Hobbies Room, essentially an old-English parlor that Rudyard Kipling would be comfortable in, where a multiple-screens, audiovisual show shares the story of how chocolate is made. Our shadowy host is the fictional chocolate maker himself – not Willy Wonka, but the whimsically-named Julian Dandino Ishimitty! (I’m not making this up.) He’s presented on screen in silhouette, a spindly character in a top hat, tux and what appears to be a cravat. If Timothy Chalamet was the banker on Deal or No Deal, combined with Mr. Peanut, this would be him.
Once Ishimitty has finished his spiel, we move on to the Time Machine room, where Professor Ishimitty takes us back in time (again via multiple screens) to explore the invention of chocolate. It’s actually pretty informative, learning about the 4 European chocolate makers who pioneered the confectionary art form. What amuses me most is the room itself, with its dark lighting, faux-Greek pillars and domed, frescoed roof — straight out of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. At a certain point, a pretty, uniformed assistant invites a child to come up and pull the time machine lever, which causes lights to flash and spinning gears to appear on the screens. Very steam punk.
We’ve gone into Disney territory.
Next up is Ishimitty’s Collection Room, with more video screens to watch and a large collection of, yes, English tea cups and saucers. Cuz, why not? The room also boasts over a dozen beautifully colored, stained-glass windows, which are quite lovely. What an extravagant, Western-style mansion our dear Professor Ishimitty lives in!
At last we arrive at the Chocotopia Factory, an L-shaped hallway featuring a glass overlook for viewing the actual cookie factory, a story below us. Here we see the factory staff hard at work, baking dough, forming chocolate into molds and packing everything onto conveyor belts. Everyone is dressed in blue and white, hygienic robes, doctor-style, with face masks and hoodies. I was hoping for Oompa Loompas but you can’t have everything, I guess.
But wait, a placard on the opposite wall indicates that the actual workers here are not humans, but in fact Ishiwitty’s “white dwarfs” with “their cute cat-like eyes,” devoting themselves to their work and “filled with excitement for the finished products.” A nearby diorama of animatronic figures – very “It’s a Small World” — shows the dwarves hard at work, pulling giant radishes out of the ground, picking almonds out of trees and stirring giant cups of chocolate. It looks like they’re having almost as much fun as I am!
Imagine Disney meet Ghibli, with a touch of Hello Kitty.
It’s here that I learn the real reason why the cookies are named Shiroi Koibito. According to a sign:
“On the way back home after skiing with father today, it started to snow when we reached the town. Father looked at the snow and said, ‘White lovers are starting to fall.’ The comment impressed me.”
It impresses me as well. Apparently this is not just Walt Disney meets Roald Dahl. We’re in the land of castles, emperors and samurai. After all, what Japanese experience would be complete without a haiku?
I came to Shiro Koibito Park as something of an afterthought, looking to fill a vacant morning. The park turns out to be the absolute best entertainment in town for a mere $5. Like the factory’s website suggested, I’ve fallen in love with my “whole body and soul.”
(When traveling, sometimes you visit a well-promoted attraction…and it disappoints. Other times, you drop by a corny tourist site, ready to be annoyed…and, somehow, it delights. No matter how much advanced research you do about a place, there’s just no telling if it will suit your fancy. That’s because guidebooks, blogs and reviews are just research tools—nothing more. They’re written by other people, with their own personal criteria, their own aesthetic, their own interior life. I say, take other people’s opinions with a grain of salt and let your own impressions form on their own. Or better yet, don’t read any reviews at all. Stumble upon a magical chocolate factory with no preparation at all and let the experience play over you.)