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Japan Trip (Hokkaido): 24 hours in Otaru

Our last stop in Hokkaido, Otaru. Otaru is a small harbour city, half an hour train ride from Sapporo.



The famous Otaru Canal

As touristy as it is, when you are in Otaru, one place that you must take a tourist picture is the Otaru Canal, which is lined with old warehouses. Otaru Canal is around 15 mins walk from Otaru station. Walk all the way straight when you exit from the main door of the station and you will see the Otaru Canal.

Night view, lit with orange lights
Day view, a different feel with artist's drawing
Sakaimachi Street

Very near to Otaru Canal is the Sakaimachi street where both sides of the streets were lined with various shops selling souvenirs, glassware, theme shops, cafes, seafood shops which grilled the seafood on the spot for you.

Map taken from japan-guide.com

There're many shops along the streets that sell these glassware.
Seafood shops that will grill the huge and juicy scallops on the spot for you!

Samurai theme shop
King crab on sale!
Music Box Museum

Walked to the end of Sakaimachi street and we found the music box museum which friends were raving about before we came Otaru. To be exact, it's not really a museum, it's a very big music box souvenir shop. Nonetheless, they sell really cute and exquisite music boxes, and you can mix and match the music and the pattern of the box.





Foodie in Otaru

Other than that, we ate lots of small meals in Otaru, so that we could try out all the food we felt like eating before leaving Hokkaido.

This potato collection shop is just one road across the Canal.

We bought a potato churros to try out.. It's quite nice! Imagine eating churros but with potato filling
There're several little shops inside this food court selling ramen, don, sushi, sashimi and some souvenir.
We decided to satisfy our sashimi, uni and scallop craving. The method of cooking scallop in Otaru was different from the one we had in Noboribetsu. The cook in Noboribetsu grilled the scallop with just soy sauce and salt, while in Otaru, butter and some other sauces were added. We preferred the taste of the scallop in Noboribetsu.
Crispy skin with hot red bean paste in it.. Nice!
Ohh.. melon ice cream with the expensive melon. Yummy!
There were people advertising about this cheesecake when we were there. Not bad but not 'wow'!

All the goodness in one bowl - Otoro, Chutoro, Uni. There's really a difference between Otoro and the other sashimi, it just melt in the mouth and you can taste the fragrant fatty fish oil in your mouth. It's heaven!
Big prawns!!
It's time to catch the Airport Fast Train to Sapporo! Even if it's Airport Fast Train, it's still very squeezy in the train with Japanese commuters taking the train and no allocated space to put our luggage, not a comfortable ride at all.

Anyway, bye bye Hokkaido! We will be back!

Ending the post with stamp chops we got at Sapporo Airport!

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