Otaru, Japan

Wednesday, April 24, 2019           Otaru, Japan

The Westerdam underwent another immigration after docking at 6:00am. Every passenger had to pass through a Japanese face to face inspection to have a personal photo and fingerprints taken. After breakfast our number was called so we went to the main dining room on the ship to follow the needed process to go ashore. Luckily, it went quickly and we were on our way by 9:15am. 

We walked into the town of Otaru, a comfortable 2 mile hike. Finding wifi on this portion of our trip has been near impossible but after getting into the middle of the town and asking at few coffee/tea shops and the information booth, we finally found the best wifi in all of Japan…it was excellent.

Otaru is nationally known as the “Town of Sushi”. There are over 100 sushi restaurants down Sushi Street….Larry was in sushi heaven.  The best selling types are sea urchin, mantis shrimp, and herring. They even have sushi toppings for each season of the year.

We were fortunate to enjoy Sakaimachidori Street with the famous Music Box Museum and Kitaichi Glass Store. 

A lot of famous Japanese confectionery shops offered free samples…we enjoyed the pound cake and chocolate especially. You could say Larry’s sweet tooth was covered.

Japan has to be the country with the most boxed confections...they are everywhere. They appear to be one of the biggest souvenirs.

Snow still appeared on the mountainside.  Mount Tengu Ski Resort was spotted during our walk into town.

What a great little port town on Japan’s most northern island of Hokkaido!