Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 84

We did a day-trip to Otaru, which is a city northwest of Sapporo that sits on Ishikari Bay. It sits between the water and a set of mountains. It was a short little train trip from Sapporo. Along the way, I took a few pictures of the water from the window. You can also see how hilly it is around the coastline.

As you come out of the station, there is a main road that leads down to the port. As we walked down towards the water, we went past a few interesting things, like a covered market.

One of the historical buildings is the Bank of Japan Otaru Museum. The building itself dates from July 1912 and was designed by Kingo Tatsuno, a well-known architect of the old redbrick Tokyo Station and Uheiji Nagano. The outside of the building is done in a Renaissance style, with 5 small domes. While the exterior looks like stone, it is actually brick with a mortar covering to make it look like stone. It was turned into a museum in 2003. Inside in the main hall, you can see the high ceilings and the banking counter.

This in the former Hokkaido Bank head office, built in 1912. One of the interesting features is that the windows are not evenly spaced, but rather, the interval between the windows varies. If you look closely on the left-hand side, you can see that there is one window, then a gap, and then 3 windows close together, then another gap before the next window.

Then it was time for our sushi lunch! We sat at the sushi counter in the back room and ordered a variety of nigiri sushi and had a great view of them making them right in front of us. We also got a couple different soups, including miso and a seafood soup (you can see the crab legs)

We really have no idea what the board says (any of our friends that read Japanese, please let us know) but they took our picture with it as we were finishing up.

This is the door to the restaurant ...very non-descript!

As we got down near the water, we got to the canal area, which has alot of shops. The city is very famous for it's glass shops. This glass shop is housed in the former Takasaburo Natori store, built in 1906. One characteristic of this building is the storehouse style of construction with wing-like awning on 2 sides with each of those sides having an entrance. This is an example of shop architecture from the latter half of the Meiji period.

General pictures of the shopping streets in the canal area.

This is the former Etchuya Hotel, which was built in 1931. It was designed by Kuniharu Kurasawa and was listed in British travel guides as early as the late 1800's. It has a wing exclusively built for use by foreigners. A key feature of the architecture is the two rows of bay windows down the middle and the circular windows on the top floor.

This building, built in 1930, is the former Otaru Brank of the Yasuda bank. With its' Greek architectural style, it is a typical example of bank architecture in the early Showa period (1926 - 1989). The building's hallmark is its columns, which help create an air of grandeur.

Then came an ice cream stop! This little place is on a back alley but it is somewhat famous. Kita-no-aisukurimu Yasan is housed in a converted warehouse along the canal and has some seriously stomach-turning flavours (fermented soy beans, tofu, crab, sea urchin, beer and even a jet-black scoop of squid ink). We stayed with the more normal flavors.

Susan in front of the canal. They do boat cruises on the canal but we passed. Gorgeous weather tho!!

We then stopped by the Otaru Brewery. It is quite a new brewery, starting only in 1995 by a Japanese gentleman who wanted to bring German beer culture to Japan. The brewery uses methods of brewing according to the Reinheitsgebot (beer purity law from 1516). Supposedly, they don't export the beer so Otaru is the only place where you can buy/drink this beer. We did a tour of the brewery where they explained the process to us, and then we got to taste. Yep, go figure, Susan and beer again .. we don't really know what has gotten into her! Although .. it WAS a raspberry beer!

Then all the way down at the water and there was this really impressive ship docked.

On the way back to the train statoin, we walked by this place and there is this drum group performing. Quite a nice little show!

Dinner was at Jin Jin, which is a famous Jingisukan restaurant. Jingisukan is barbecued lamb self cooked at your table on a big heavy grill. This is famous food in Hokkaido, so of course, we had to stop by. Mind you, Susan doesn't actually EAT lamb, so we had to be sure that there was some other kind of meat as well. The restaurant was quite small and the kitchen almost non-existant, which I can imagine since the customers cook at the table.

The grill pan is quite interesting. There is the flat part and then a "moat". They pour a broth in the moat, bring it to a boil, and in there go all of the veggies and the noodles. The meat is cooked on the flat top. Then you pull the veggies out into a big cup and eat those along with the meat once it is cooked.

Just a quick view of the indoor shopping arcade that the restaurant was in.

Beer Festival! We timed the trip so that we could do both the All-Star baseball game and the Sapporo Beer Festival. This is one of the tents that was setup along Otaru park. Mind you, tonight Susan was all about the fizzy, fruity soda-like drink instead of beer.