hokkaidid 2 - otaru

For future reference, next time I decide that I want to spend as long as possible in one location, I should look up the place first to make sure there's actually stuff to do to fill my whole time. We decided to stay in Sapporo for as long as we could without taking too many days off, which turned out to be four days. What we found out soon enough though, was that when Sapporo is -8 on a daily basis and covered with snow, most people don't want spend too much time outside unless it's for a famous festival or for snowboarding and stuff. Since we decided against the snowboarding, we actually found ourselves without much else to do in Sapporo, working out to be a whole day free.

It probably turned out to be a good thing, this whole lack of plans in Sapporo. We ventured out to nearby Otaru, which we heard was known for its fresh seafood and awesome fish markets. But how fun can a market honestly be?

Well, pretty fun when it turns you get this:

Free crab. And ikura. And uni. Foods that normal cost a ridiculous amount were given away for free. Our timing of our trip turned out to be awesome, since it was just post-snow festival and the day after a public holiday. So while most people were going home or at work, we had the market to ourselves. And sure, it was a little dodgy of us to play the "I'm a foreigner but I can speak some Japanese" card every day, but when it gives you free samples of these foods you would normally pay $450/kg for, then I'm playing the foreigner card.

Our next stop: an onsen, or public bath. Yeah, it's definitely intimidating and weird at first to be bathing and naked in front of total strangers, but I'm getting used to it. I think I've got less of an issue with it since  being the only guy of our travel group, it means that I don't have to bathe with people I know seeing me as well. But before we came, I had envisaged soaking in a steaming hot bath outside overlooking fields of white all around as it snowed. Yeah, I had really high expectations, so I was actually expecting to be quite disappointed.

That is, until our taxi drove through the long, snow-covered driveway of our onsen and stopped right at the front door, where a doorman let us inside what looked to be a hotel. I did have a minor freak out as we stood in the entrance, afraid that the price of ¥1500 was a typo and that we should have added another zero to that number. After the onsen though, I did feel a little bad knowing it wasn't a typo and paid that little for something that awesome. Not quite the little bath overlooking the snowcapped countryside, but still amazing. It started to snow heavily just as I entered the bath, which was all the more awesome. I would have taken photos if I was alone, but didn't want to look like a pervert. But the words "incredibly" and "awesome" don't even do it justice.

We also heard while we were at the fish markets that there was a festival in Otaru that night as well, the lesser known Hokkaido Festival known as "The Gleaming Path" festival, so thought we should have a look.

We arrived at dusk, just in time to watch the few festival-people start lighting the some of the candle sculptures that lit  the whole road. Very cool. I don't want to be too quick to judge, seeing how I got to the other festival on the very last day, but I might say this festival may be just as good, if not better than the snow one.

One of the multiple female snowmen surrounding the "Tiger Woods" snowman.

Sure, the Snow festival in Sapporo has dozens of works that would have taken ages to make and sculpt, all made from people around the world, but this one had some celebrity mini-snowmen, an ice bar (Hot wine actually is much better than you would expect it to be) and, well, pretty shiny lights.

It was totally worth the whole losing feeling in your hands/feet thing to see all the lights around the street. Well, maybe. I think my other friends may be inclined to disagree with me.