Big Japan Trip Take Two: Home of the Herring Mansion

A small fishing town

The canal, complete with factories and store houses

We went for a day trip to Otaru on recommendation of just about every website to do with Hokkaido and Sapporo. It is a harbour town, complete with a large bay and relatively short canal, built up in the 1800s. It is right in the mountains and the train journey there from Sapporo is pretty, with a lot of coastal views as you get closer. 

We spent pretty much all day walking, largely because we didn't have any set plan of what we wanted to do. We found the canal easily, where they charge muppets about £12 for a boat ride along the canal for 40 minutes - it's a very short stretch that they do, as well.  Not worth it - you can walk it for free. It's not like Cambridge, where at least if you're being punted you get some historical background to what's along the river.

What is along THIS river is a bunch of old factory and warehouses from the early 1900s, some of them rare in that they'd been built entirely with brick, which is unusual for Japan. They have all been converted into restaurants and things - it reminded us of the ruin bars in Budapest. 

We walked along the road parallel to the bay and enjoyed the view and then trekked to the botanic garden which, it turns out, is set into a mountain side. There was a delightful sign on a small residential road warning us that it was about to be a 20% incline, only slightly mitigated by my wedges. It was an interestingly landscaped garden and we saw a lot of things while we were there and on our way to it. I saw a beautiful lizard but Hubbo was in the way and then he moved and the lizard hid in the brush so I couldn't photograph it. It was about 20cm long nose to tail and it was irridescent stripy and blue, with the last half of its tail completely blue. After looking it up online, I'm fairly confident it was the five-lined skink, which is common and younger skinks have bright blue tails - which was visible even when it was in the brush.

We saw butterflies, a variety of spiders and webs, giant ants - Hubbo got chased by a wasp/bee/hornet/large aggressive winged hellbeast. Then we walked all the way down, taking a shortcut that google guided us to. 

Fishing Town means Fish for Lunch

One place tourists are guided to is an indoor fish market, which also has a restaurant or two. We chose one and waited in a queue for a table to be made free. It was interesting seeing people coming and going from restaurants to pick up fresh ingredients for the next dish they were murdering cooking. I have never seen so many live crabs in one place at once, not even when we went crabbing in Blakeney. 

Hubbo had the "Season Special" bowl, which meant there was a bit of everything.  Prawns, shrimp, tuna, sea urchin (the current in-season thing), salmon roe, whelk. He ate all of it.  I've been feeling a bit off the last 24 hours so I played it safe and got grilled salmon and grilled sablefish, which I've never had before, and a bowl of rice. Ok, yeah I had to work around the bones, but the salmon was good. The sablefish was delicious. A fatty fish, so it was soft and tender and it broke apart fairly easily. It was well worth the wait (it came a while after the rest of our food).

Safe Passage and Good Business Blessings

There was a sign for a bus towards the cable car that would take us up to the summit of Mount Tengu, so named because... nobody's really sure. Some people think that people who'd travelled to Hokkaido missed their mountain which was called Tengu so they named another it. Some people think it looks like Tengu, a goblin or mountain god, others think that he was made on the mountain... either way, he has a long phallic nose and there were a lot of masks and statues inside the museum by the gift shop.

By rubbing his nose at the summit shrine, you're apparently blessed with safe travel and good business opportunities.




It was a strange station at the summit. There was the main building, which had the observation deck upstairs, a gift shop, small museum, restaurant etc. Then outside there was jazz piano playing all the time, a chipmonk enclosure, a shrine which had a fairylights walkway, some coloured lighting on a couple of birch trees for no obvious reason other than to make them different colours and what appeared to be an unused ropeway from the past. There was also a rentable blow up dome tent, which they sprayed with insect repellent. By the time dusk arrived, I rather wished we were in said bubble, but I don't think I've been bitten again*.

We walked along the woodland path a bit, as well, and saw other parts of the area surrounding Otaru, which was nice. We would have done the complete path but it became an unbeaten track and I didn't fancy it in my wedgets. Why am I wearing impractical shoes? Because my toe needed some air today - I've got a minor problem with my toenail again, it would seem. I didn't even have pinchy shoes this time, I think it's just triggered by walking on swollen feet for hours.

After a while we decided it was time to head back to Sapporo for the evening - Hubbo is sunburnt and tired (probably heat exaustion as well) and I was feeling headachy (also sun exposure, though I wear suncream, so no burns here!).

Tomorrow we're going to explore Sapporo a bit better and visit the brewery!

Photos:



* I got two: one on each ankle. 👎