It was slightly drizzling today, nice cool weather. This is the landmark of Otaru the 小樽運河 Otaru Canal. In older times the canal was used to transport goods. Most of the buildings along the side are warehouses. In winter it is the main site of the snow light path festival.
Most of the buildings here have historical value and are protected by the government.
The info center itself is a building with historical values
A statue of an olden day fire department dog. It's located just in front of the tourist info centre.
We decided to stop by a beer making factory for a free tour and sample some otaru beer since it was starting to rain a little heavier.
The beer although brewed in Otaru follows a 500 year old German beer recipe, it is made with barley, wheat and hops from Germany mixed with the special mineral composition of Otaru water which transforms it into Otaru beer. The Braun family has been carefully guarding the 5 century old recipe and brewing it up to this day. While in the factory, we can see Mr. Braun tending the machinery.
After beer, we tipsily start our journey down Otaru's tourist track with its many glass handicrafts, music boxes and food & wine shops.
We noticed an interesting myriad of small shops nearby and stopped by to see what was being sold there.
Bought a Bakudanyaki 爆弾焼. It's a ginormous takoyaki ball! Must be really careful while eating it cause its really piping hot when they serve it to you. Comes in a few varieties such as spring onion, mentaiko and cheese just to name a few.
Most of the shops sell the same stuff such as music boxes, glass trinkets, glassware glass beads.
Saw many cute glass trinkets which I would have loved when I was a teenager, but somehow the price and knowing the trinkets would probably end up lost somewhere deterred me from buying any. Photography not allowed for most of the shops therefore lack of pictures here. A few shops offering music box DIY decorating sessions and glass bead DIY sessions. Would've loved to try making glass beads but we had to wait for the glass to cool down for around 1 or 2 hours after crafting the beads, and also come back to the shop to collect them.
Choose your own music, and box and any ornaments you would like to glue on top.
Cool design of incense burners IMHO.
Glass trinkets
Glass sticks which could be turned into glass beads.
Photo of the class in progress and price list.
Prices are steep for the honeydew but they weren't as sweet as I expected.
We'll be having our dinner at home today because its 土用の丑の日。 Doyou no ushi no hi.
What's that you say? Well you'll have to read about it in the next post.
We stopped by the Daimaru supermarket for pre dinner bentos as every evening they have a food clearance sale where all kinds of food is sold for a big discount. Japanese supermarket believe in serving fresh food everyday so the food from today must be sold out before closing hence the discounts. I think we got some yakitori and a mini bento. Everyday I'm stuffed with food, burp!
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