Welcome aboard.
My favorite part of the old Chowhound site was reading the trip reports of places I was planning to go and putting them on my personal map as potential waypoints. It saves a lot of uncertainty in trying to find good food.
As a person with a long relationship with the Okayama region, I’m a bit of a cheerleader and want people to have a good and nuanced experience. Each region has its specialties but it’s easy to miss them when traveling.
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Welcome aboard!! Our Europe board has been gaining traction and momentum and Asia Pacific is also picking up.
Never been to Sapporo, though we hope to go later this year.
@TokushimaCook and @Jackalope are expats with a wealth of ideas and information. @TokushimaCook is returning to the USA in a day or two, tho I think his heart and home is here. Hoping he continues to grace us with his posts.
I’ll be glad to contribute to your trip plans as I can. I’m far from an expert. Just a very enthusiastic enthusiast!! 
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We’ve learned to queue up at the more popular restaurants at/before open. As you can see on the door sign at Mori, the wait was already 30 ~ 60 minutes a half hour after they opened.
There was already a trickle of people being turned away at the door if they did not have reservations.
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Ah well, former expat for me I’m afraid, but I get to Okayama often enough to have relevant knowledge about restaurants. But it’s very regional. For example, even though it’s not that far from Okayama on a map, I don’t know anything about Tokushima, except they have their own style of ramen, which is kind of like sukiyaki (I’m think I’m safe here from the ire of Tokushima residents who feel I’ve just slandered their local dish) and they have large whirlpools in the sea nearby. I’ll reply directly to spam.musubi with a few tips.
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Adding on to what GG wrote:
For restaurant reviews, Gurunavi is good. You can click on the globe icon and switch to English (or Chinese or Korean) but those reflect a subset of all the information on the site, so better to use the Japanese version in conjunction with Google Translate. Also, I tend to avoid places that cater to foreigners as the experience (and sometimes the menu) is different and using English language sites tends to self-select for that category.
Tabelog — I’ve linked the English version — may be good for making reservations, but is IMO lousy for finding restaurants as it seems to be mostly, if not exclusively, sponsored listings. It also seems to be most useful for big cities.
The only tip I can give for Hokkaido (never been) is make sure to eat some Jingisukan (ジンギスカン, “[Genghis Khan])” in a place that specializes in it. You can find it other parts of Japan, but I’m betting they do it best in Hokkaido.
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