Otaru - a small town near Sapporo in Hokkaido.
It is much like Venice in that there is a central canal, and they like fine crafts and glass blowing.
It is also littered with tourists. But not pigeons.
Breakfast @ Mister Doughnut Dee had fond memories of this chain "Mister Doughnut" and insisted we go back.
Location: JR Station
Food:
1. Variety of doughnuts
2. Cafe Au Lait
3. Cute paper bag (OK its not edible, i know, but worthy of mention)
Dough was chewy. There's something about a chocolate doughnut with extra icing in a contrast colour and pastel sprinkles. The 5 year old needs of my brain are satisfied, but after 2 minutes my 24 year old stomach started rumbling.
Score: 3/5
Otaru Yesterday it snowed quite heavily in Sapporo.
We knew we were in hokkaido as the snow was still there when we were at sea level & the snow went pretty much all the way to the edge of the ocean - to the point where, as we passed by on the train, we saw surfers running in their wetsuits... on the snow... what can we say, some ppl are crazy.
As Otaru is further away from the city, and has a canal running through it... its much colder!! The helpful LCD screen next to the canal read 5 degrees the time we were there. (and then it went to 4.7 actually)
We spent all day semi-slipping on ice on the roads and footpaths... there was snow and ice everywhere! Thankfully the canal had not frozen over (good pictures) + ducks swimming.
Lunch "KANI-DOUJYOU" Otaru is known for its seafood, in particular Unidon (sea-urchin).
Location: In Otaru on street behind main street
http://kani-doujyou.com
The front of the shop was filled with tanks of giant scallops, hairy crab about 1m diameter with legs about 30cm long, and a huge array of seafood. The back 3rd of the shop had some seating, looked slightly dodgey, but we decided to give it a go- after all the food's guaranteed to be fresh!
Food:
1. Uni Don
2. Uni + grilled scallops don
The uni was lovely. Juicy, not big, but seemed quite fresh. Its salty. Texture is a little gooey, understandable if you can't stomach oyster you probably don't want to try this. The scallops- i had hoped they were sashimi, but obviously i didn't get that across. :( The non giant variety. Giant would be gross if eaten as sashimi. eww. I thought they were a bit dry, being directly char-grilled you could see the charred marks which were tasty, but dried scallop turned out to be a bit like gong-yiu-chu. Which sucks. Anyway. I think they were just a bit over done, perhaps if they left the scallops whole and didn't butterfly them. The uni was super super yummy tho!
More shopping + Music Box Museum
We amused ourselves shopping in numerous shops filled with different glass handicrafts, wooden carvings and leather goods.
There is also a music box museum in Otaru, 3 stories tall, ground floor is approx 200m squared... its quite massive, and includes music boxes in all shapes and sizes, playing music from Totoro to Beauty and the Beast to Fur Elise to Jpop.
Snacks: On the way back to the JR station
Street side stalls for grilled giant hokkaido scallops were abundant. Thankfully we found the store with the BIGGEST scallops, and got the last order. We could've sworn the guy was packing up shop until we asked him... :)
As were icecream stalls. Clara insisted we find the one with SIX flavours of soft serve in the one cone. Super creamy & super yummy~!
And a giant takoyaki stall selling what they renamed 'bakudanyaki" and that it was totally different from takoyaki and okonomiyaki. Anyway. Lies. Its the same, only 8cm wide, 200 grams, and has a thick dried skin to stop it falling apart, has been evidently cooking for at least 15 minutes if not longer. Another point is that the shop was playing what seemed to be their theme song, going something like "bakudanyaki, bakudanyaki..." & then listing ingredients & random stuff.... it was kinda catchy in a disturbing way...
Oh yes, & the store selling giant rice crackers. Denise got the wasabi nori one, super yummy.
Needless to say, we LOVED Otaru.
Dinner: Oden
On the way back, we realised we were too full to have a full dinner & so, with Dee's reminiscing about the oden she had a few days ago (see Sapporo 1), we decided to revisit the 7-eleven & get oden to share.
It was just as yummy as last time =).
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