Otaru

Otaru Canal

Otaru is a about a 45 minute train ride from Sapporo. The early start to our day trip saw us walking past the very long line of people waiting for Daimaru to open!

The line waiting for Daimaru to open! It went down all the way past the line of sight!

Blue skies graced us briefly as we walked towards Otaru Canal. A small part of the Canal was restored which we visited. As we headed towards Sakaimachi Street, a preserved merchant street a short walk from the Canal, rain began to pelt down alternating with snow. When faced with miserable weather, one consumed ice-cream, 8 layers of it in different flavours.

Made it to the Canal for a photo!

Sakaimachi Street

Oma and Opa bought a 6 layer ice-cream for themselves

The 8 layer! Flavours included lavender, apple, rockmelon, Hokkaido milk, green tea and more

Another 8 layer in a cup. Just how much ice-cream could a family eat? A lot apparently

The dismal weather validated our visit to Kitakaro even more! Kitakaro is well known for its cream puff and the Baumkuchen (a cake of German origin). Kitakaro sold 3 different types of cream puffs and we had to try all three. Their number 1 best seller is the Kita no yume Dome and it didn't disappoint! Choux pastry filled with the smoothest and richest cream and custard. The official description read "The jumbo cream puff delivers satisfaction from two generous layers of custard and fresh cream, which harmonise with each other." They were not kidding when they said generous. Cream puff heaven! Yume Fushigi was described as "The pastry is crisp. The filling is thick and smooth. It brings on a dream-like moment". It was good but not as good as the bestseller. Note that the third cream puff, Piscot, had a texture that was "astonishingly chewy". Whilst the filling was delicious, we weren't too sure about the chewy bun. Kitakaro had samples of the Baumkuchen to try. We decided to buy a green tea Baumkuchen to munch on. To our delight, they also had lucky bags which Malcolm snapped up quickly.

Kitakaro

Cream puffs waiting for us!

The best seller

Just look at how much cream and custard you get!

Our second favourite

Our least favourite

Ready to take on some cream puff goodness!

Kitakaro lucky bag!

The goodies inside it

Green tea baumkuchen

We had to move on to Rokkatei, another famous Hokkaido patisserie. Their Marusei Butter Sand it is one of the most famouse Japanese snack only sold in Hokkaido and limited shops in Japan and it is the signature product of Rokkatei.  Crunch butter biscuits sandwiches a layer of raisin butter cream (the butter is made from 100% Hokkaido milk) mixed with white chocolate. We bought it, a coffee version as well as a one with quince in it. We later tried the latter and oh my goodness...we should have bought more!!! We randomly picked up a few more goodies but had to limit our purchases. The products has fresh dairy and so had a rather short consume-by date. Besides, we had one more stop to make...FYI, Rokkatei also sells cream puffs for 90 yen and you get free coffee if you buy and eat it at the cafe on the second floor.

Rokkatei just next door to Kitakaro

Looks rather plain

That thing sure does taste good!

LeTao, another popular Hokkaido confectionery company, is famous for its double fromage cheesecake, a mascarpone based no-bake cheesecake. Hurray shouted Elliot! We bought their number 1 bestseller which was sold frozen so we could bring it to share with our friends in Tomamu in 2 days.

We had 2 more stops to make while in Otaru. The first was Kitaichi Glass. When the herring fishing industry in Otaru declined in the 1950s, the makers of glass buoys shifted to the production of refined glassware instead. Otaru is now well known for glass manufacturing so glassware galore could be found. The Kitaichi Glass area has everything imaginable made of glass. Although I spend most of my time in a somewhat stressed state with nightmares of the children breaking something!

The next stop did not alleviate my stress levels. Orgel Doh Otaru Music Box Museum is one of Japan's largest music box shops, with many beautiful but delicate music boxes on display and for sale. The range truly was amazing with a myriad of different shapes and sizes, and different music options.

Music box museum and store

Our very late lunch was of course to eat the super fresh Hokkaido seafood. The servings were generous, the food cooked well and the taste superb! We rolled out to make our way back to Sapporo. We had enough time to venture into Daimaru! It was still incredibly busy but my parents finally managed to snag their first lucky bag, a Samsonite lucky bag! It was great way to end what was a great day.

Amazing seafood, generous serves and reasonable price. What more could one ask for!

One of their many combinations on rice

Lara's lunch. Big fat yummy prawns

Grilled giant scallops

Seafood ramen 

Samsonite lucky bag! In it was a samsonite backpack, an ipad messenger bag, and a memory foam travel pillow!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year from snowy Sapporo!

Many locals visit a shrine and then take the cable car up Mount Moiwa to see the first sunrise on New Year's Day. We didn't wake up early enough and our first surprise of 2016 was that we got 50% off at the hotel buffet! $10 per person was a satisfactory price and we tucked in. The breakfast had a good selection of Japanese offerings. If you weren't that way inclined, they did have a basic selection of Western style breakfast foods. Hokkaido milk was also on offer and we were rather aghast that the locals drinks it with pepper.

By the time we reached Mount Moiwa Ropeway station station, it was well past 10am and the locals had obviously finished their pilgrimage as there were no lines for anything. After a few failed "views" atop our numerous mountain ascents, we got clear skies albeit only for a short time. The plentiful snow at the peak gave the children much joy. There were snow man aides provided for the children to use. We ate at the peak and it was rather serene watching the scene change and the snow fall to softly playing traditional Japanese music. We had the popular local dish of soup curry and finished off with Hokkaido milk ice-cream. Just superb!

Pay close attention to the circled word...

Going up!

View of Sapporo. You can see the clouds coming through!

Made it to the top to see a view just in time!

Yay! A picture of all 5 of us!

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Chicken soup curry

Hokkaido milk ice-cream

After our descent from the mountain, we discovered where all the locals were...at the shops buying Lucky Bags or making the most of the New Year sales! Lucky Bags or Fukubukuro is a Japanese New Year tradition whereby stores sell bags of goodies with a net worth more than the sale price. It would be tragic not to partake in this important tradition and thus we set about acquiring our Lucky Bags as many tourist sites and museum type places were closed over the New Year's period.

Lara delighted with her lucky bag

Dinner was at the Sapporo Beer Garden. The Sapporo Beer Museum was unfortunately closed and so the Beer Garden was the closest we were going to get. We opted for the non-smoking Hall as the popular Kessel Hall had a 2 hour waiting time! The food was a lambfest which was good if you liked lamb. It was a DIY meal over hotplates which meant we all stank after the meal...The food was alright without being brilliant. The beer, said Malcolm, was only just passable. I guess it was a tick box for us.

Sapporo Beer Garden

Sapporo

We left our very last Ryokan stay and bid farewell to sleepy Noboribetsu. We had an early train to catch bound for Sapporo. Unfortunately many attractions in Sapporo have closed for the New Year period including the Clock Tower. We dumped our bags and made a beeline for Shiroi Koibito Park. Shiroi Koibito is a biscuit made of chocolate sandwiched between langue de chat. I first started to get addicted to them from my days of working for a Japanese company. My boss used to bring them back to the office from his trips to Japan. Well guess what? Sapporo is the home of Shiroi Koibito! It is also apparently the second most popular souvenir that Japanese buy.

The "factory" was a rather unusual tudor-esque building with eclectic collections including gramophones and old toys. It did run through the process of how chocolate is created as well as how the biscuit is made. There were large panes with views into the production area. Unfortunately, it was packed when we went which made it very difficult to read and take in everything. The cafe which sold ice-creams and trreats was also highly popular, partly because it had a birds eye view of the surrounds. We had to wait for 30 minutes to get a seat, but were glad we did! The one disappointing thing was that the biscuits were not cheaper at the factory than at other outlets. The only difference was that they had special souvenir combinations that were available elsewhere. With so many people in the store, we had to move with the tide of human bodies. We had at most a mere 2 or 3 seconds to decide whether or not we wanted a particular box before we were shuffled past it. Paranoia set in and we grabbed as many boxes as we could that were labelled "not available at New Chitose Airport". We left with $183 worth of biscuits!

Part of the factory!

A fountain made by Royal Doulton in the late 1800s as you enter

Part of the collection of diaromas to relay how chocolate is made

One of the views of the factory floor

gramophone collection...

One could get married here...here is proof

Our "lunch"

At 3pm, we lugged our haul to Stellar Place at Sapporo Station to have a sushi "lunch" at the well-known Hanamaru. We were too late even for dinner. The restaurant had tickets patrons take to join the queue. By the time we arrived, all the queue tickets for the day were gone!! We trudged into the closest restaurant which looked reasonable and had our default pork cutlets instead. A reliably tasty and cheap meal!

No Hanamaru sushi for us :(

The grate for Sapporo. Finally found one not covered up by snow!

Our post "lunch" shop at Stellar Place did not last long. We survived the hordes at the food section of Daimaru long enough to purchase some breads and headed for our base for our Sapporo stay. We made reservations at Hotel Clubby we were able to get two very rare QUADRUPLE rooms. Yes you read correctly! FOUR beds in the one Japanese hotel room and with space to spare for our large suitcases!

The range of Star Wars merchandise in Japan is mind-boggling but this one takes the cake. Moving R2D2 fridge!

Darth Vader vacuum anyone?!?!

Kit Kat store!

Butter, strawberry and maple, sakura and green tea to add to our collection of shinshu apple, rum and raisin, wasabi, red bean, oolong tea, and the bakeable kit kat...

Everyone was too tired to go out again and so it was a quite New Year's Eve for the family, much like our other New Year's Eves...