Aomori

 Our next port, Aomori, we could see the big A-Spam building, basically is their chamber of commerce building, there was not much in there to see other than a few shops on the main floor. Mostly impressive from the outside.

Our ship was greeted by young children and their teachers, along with jumping around they waved and said Hi. It appeared there were going to be drummers but we missed that.

Again this was a very walkable port. We headed to the Nebula Museum and purchased our tickets to get in. The museum features the large illuminated hand made paper mache floats and masks that are used during their huge August Fire Festival that attracts 3 million visitors a year. The huge floats are about 4 tons and are wheeled on platforms during the festival.

When then walked over to the A-Factory, inside is a food mall featuring lots of Fuji apples, and apple products. We purchased an apple to take back to the ship to try as well as a couple delicious apple tarts and an apple ice tea. We at some point did a taste test comparing an apple from the ship's buffet to the expensive fancy Fuji apple we purchased and we didn't notice any difference, could be that the ship gets their  apples from this area.

We walked around the uto-jinja shrine and beautiful grounds.

Passed by the Ichinen Temple.

Then it was time to find a sushi place for lunch, Dave has not had yet had any this trip and time was running out to get it in Japan. We looked at many places before deciding on this one. There were people waiting to get in and we figured  that was a good sign. We figured out that you put your name on the list and wait to be called, it took about 20 or so minutes. 

We were lead to our own little room with our own private booth, there was a whole area like this, otherwise it appeared the only other area to eat was a counter where they seemed to put single people. We ordered using the machine menu on the table, if you needed anything we were to push the red button and server would come.

It took us forever to decide what to order! Dave had a sushi nigiri set, came with miso soup, salad, dessert and coffee. I had some edamame and a pickled plum roll, it was tiny, no wonder it was nearly free!

Here goes the salmon row! I actually tasted one little egg, it was very juicy and not fishy.

Of course we had to find another market, the market was in the basement but there were lots of lovely shops on the upper levels.

Walking back we popped into the A-Spam building again and bought another type of apple pastry to share, we had ran into our table mate friends and they said they were so good we needed to try one.

Walked through the waterfront park on our way back to the ship. We have seen so many Shiba Inu dogs, they appear to be very popular in Japan.

Trees were starting to turn.

Tonight we had another specialty dining complements of our all included pkg. Tonight's amazing dinner was at Canaletto, the Italian restaurant on board. Cheers to another wonderful day!

Otaru

 Otaru was another walkable port from the cruise pier. The cruise port lobby was staffed with high school students who were there to answer questions, hand out maps and give helpful information about their town. 

We got off and walked along the river promenade, its was a very beautiful area. There were a few vendors selling their artwork along the walk way. People could also pay for little boat rides down the canal.

 We walked into the main part of town filled with shops. The yellow raised yellow striping in the sidewalks all over Japan is for the visually impaired, they are guided by using their canes in the ridges. When we first saw this in Tokyo we thought they were bike lanes, took us a while to discover they were not, it's a free for all with the bikes on the sidewalks!

Ice  cream is really big in Japan! We didn't have any here but wow they can be fancy.

We found a yummy and fancy bakery, LeTao, that has a nice city view from an upper deck that you climb stairs to get to.

We enjoyed for a mini butter cake each before heading on to explore the Music Box museum across the street, that use to house a rice mill and rice dealers.

There were many displays of old music boxes as well as the first floor the was a shop filled with new music boxes for purchase.

We continued our walk looking for a place of lunch.

We found a tiny 4 seat at counter place that served takoyaki, a fried creamy ball with a piece of octopus inside, we have been seeing these at street vendors all over and wanted to try them. The chef put on his head band and got to work cooking.  We were not crazy about them but I loved my Origiri. After we ate as much of the takoyaki as we could stand to be polite, the owner/chefs wife came in and we were getting ready to leave  Dave said in Japanse to them, Doumo arigatou gozaimasu, they both gave him the biggest smile and bow. Dave has renamed takoyaki to takoyucky!

We then wandered through a shopping mall area.

Sushi Chef course? Dave might be interested! 

We then caught a taxi taking it to the local aquarium.

They had some rescue turtles. 

We found it interesting that they have charts that show how certain type of fish are prepared for eating on the tanks!

The highlight were the outdoor shows, seals, penguins and sea lions. Of course they were in Japanese but we didn't need to know what they were saying to enjoy it. It was a surprisingly good aquarium that we thoroughly enjoyed!

We caught a taxi to take back into town and walked around a bit before getting back on board, the sun setting on the building was beautiful.

We ended our day with pre dinner cocktails in the Exploreres Lounge, our favorite waiter, James talked Dave into trying a Japanese whisky. We really enjoyed visiting with James, he worked in this lounge both morning and evening, so saw him at 6:00 am every morning and about 6:00 each evening, bummer that we never took his picture though.