What happens when you put 3 x Asians together on a day trip? You get a CRAP loads of photos! That’s exactly what happened when myself, Steve & Catherine decided to take another day trip to Otaru. The weather wasn’t the best for skiing or snowboarding, so we decided to take this warmer than usual day out for another visit to a town that left me a bloody good impression a few days earlier. So with some camera trigger-happy asian fingers in “ready position”, off we went to Otaru..
We took a good old train ride there instead of a bus tour this time..
It was about 11am when we got there. We certainly didn’t waste too much time at all beginning to explore this character town. Admittedly, we spent half the trip stuffing ourselves with super-delicious local cuisines, starting with..
Sushi!!
Otaru is a coastal town, so seafood is definitely abundant here. No trip here is complete without trying the super-fresh seafood on offer here. We wasted no time heading to the popular sushi-train shop nearby…
Every dish just looked so fresh and delicous!! Knowing that we will stuffing a lot more food all day, I stuck to my favourite.. salmon sushi..
Love the nice little feature in this shop, where everyone gets a little hot-water tap to fill up our green tea cup..
I could eat here all day, but we had to move on..
Double Fromage
To me, this is ultra-fancy cheesecake.
Super tasty scallop
Cooked right in front of us at the front of a seafood shop. I swear this is THE tastiest scallop a human could have!
Giant King Crab
We took this HUGE 2kg king crab home for 80,000 yen (approx. AUD $100). They even cut it up all nicely for us.
Senbei (Fried Biscuit)
Tried this wasabi flavoured biscuit..
5-flavour ice-cream
We jumped at trying this 5-flavour ice-cream, which we thought was incredible.
Only to find out later that, it is possible to get a 12-flavour ice-cream from another shop!!
Sake Brewery
We certainly didn’t skip the chance to sample some fine Otaru alcohol!
\
Of course, food is not the ONLY thing Otaru is famous for. The rest of the trip, we spent exploring some fine shops, namely:
Music Box Shop
Yeap, this is a 2-floor shop selling JUST music boxes.
You get all kinds of music boxes ranging from colourful ones, cute ones…
.. to these realistic looking sushi shaped music boxes, which looks pretty edible to me…
I don’t quite get why anyone would buy or need such a variety of music boxes!! I did not end up buying one, but I can tell you plenty of people did!
Soy Sauce Bottle
Yeah.. guess what? They even have a shop that sells ONLY soy sauce bottles.
Apparently the design is such that soy sauce will never drip down the side of the bottle. So, you will never have a soy sauce bottle that has stains on the outside wall of the bottle! Clever!
To prove it.. they even let everyone have a go..
Chopstick Shop
How about a shop that sells just chopsticks!? It’s worth mentioning that I will never pay the price that they are asking for here. Then again, I’m a cheap-skate.. 🙂
Hello Kitty Shop
And yes.. you will notice that there are a LOT of ‘Hello Kitty’ shops here as well. Apparently purple coloured Hello Kitty is unique to Hokkaido. I am happy to just take a photo with one..
Even with an entire day here, I have to say, we were still yet to completely cover all that Otaru has to offer. *sigh*.. but it’s time to move on to another town for some more ‘culture’..
