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!
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.
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