This morning Cormac and I split up and went our separate ways. He went to go skiing and I went to go join some ladies at the aquarium. This was the Sunpiazza Aquarium and it is located in the Sunpiazza mall. We arrived around 11 and stopped at a coffee shop in the mall. I got a little coffee with a snowman marshmallow in it. We had our fill of girl-talk and then went up to the aquarium.
It was a small aquarium, maybe a half-floor of content. We dawdled quite a bit and it still took less than a half hour to see everything. But what they did have was way cool. They had this tank of fish that you could stick your hand in, and the little fish would eat all the dead skin off your fingers. It was such a weird feeling! Sadly I forgot to get any video or pictures.
Here are some flat fish. These fish have evolved so that both of their eyes are on one side of their head so they can lay flat in the sand and hide, and they can still see what is going on above them.
We saw some otters playing with some plastic pipe. At this aquarium you can hold an otter’s hand during feeding time, but sadly we had just missed it because we were chatting in the coffee shop. Shouganai.
We saw seals:
And schools of fish:
And these sharks, I think they are Dog-sharks:
And I was able to see these little worms again. I saw them at the Niigata City museum, but this time they were quite active. They were actually fighting. One would get his head really close to another and then start undulating its body back and forth, and then it would strike! This happened a few times before I moved on.
They had this tank of electric eels where they had a lightbulb in the water that would light up when it detected electricity in the water. It also had a meter that illustrated just how many olts were detected.
There was a tank were we could feed the fish some shrimp:
And a little salamander. It was so cute!
After that we head back to the city near our hotel to go eat at Ramen Alley. This is a little alley in Sapporo City that is just full of ramen shops. And when we were there it was just full of people waiting in a queue to get inside the restaurants and eat some ramen.
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| Engrish for "Sold Out!" |
We came here because we wanted to eat another dish that Hokkaido is known for and that is Butter Corn Ramen. It has a whole pat of butter that you melt in the broth, as well as corn.
We found this one ramen shop where we didn’t have to wait too long.
After that we had to wait for a few people before we could move onto our next destination which was the town of Otaru, Hokkaido. While we were waiting, I took the opportunity to take some photographs of some ice sculptures that were displayed down the center of the street. I didn’t have enough time to check out the whole street, but here are some of the ice sculptures that were on one city block.
And you can see the view from the road that was blocked off for the ice sculptures.
From here we headed for Sapporo Station.
We got to Sapporo station and hopped on a train to Otaru. It took about 40 minutes to get there. Here are some pictures of the ocean from the train. This is looking northwest over the ocean.
Otaru is famous for a few things, one is music boxes, another is glass making, and the other is for an ice lantern festival along the canal that stretches through the city.
Our first stop in Otaru was to the music box museum and shop.
They sold thousands of little music boxes and decorations in this shop. Here are some music boxes that look like sushi.
And some music boxes that look more traditional and ones that had glass figures on the top. I didn’t have the money for a music box, those things are surprisingly expensive, but I did find a little purse that looked like a kimono and some fancy hair pins that I could wear in my hair when I wear my kimono.
The museum in the building had this interesting-lookin’ violin on display.
This is the street that we walked along. There were a lot of tourists around as well. We stopped in a few shops along the way too.
We finally made it to the glass museum where we met up with Jojo and Felipe. There was an interesting glass shop in the lobby with so many beautiful glass statues and dishes along with some glass pens!
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| And your typical lobby canoe. |
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| Such cute little Yokai glass figures! |
There was a place where you could sample writing with a glass pen, I was seriously tempted to buy one, It wrote so smooth! But it was a little out of my price range, and honestly, who writes real letters with an inkwell anymore? I would maybe use it twenty times in my lifetime if I bought it. So I sighed, took a picture and walked away.
It was here that the girls I had come with disappeared, I don’t know where they went, but I stuck around with Jojo and Felipe from that point onward. We didn’t go into the glass museum, I don’t know why. From there we walked all the way back to the music box store and went into a café across the road. It had a little music box with a clown sitting on a box and playing a trumpet. I recognized it as the same one/same kind my mother had when I was growing up. I know my mother’s broke, but I think she still has it.
We relaxed for a while and then made our way to a restaurant. The sun had set and all the buildings were lit up.
We passed this local mascot of the town. It is Marimokkori. He is a mascot of some algae that grows in Hokkaido. His name is a portmanteau of “marimo” which is the word for the algae, and “mokkori” which means bulge, or erection. So this is a little green algae man with an erection. I think it’s pretty funny! You can see where people have touched the bulge so much that the paint has been worn away.
I found this picture on google that shows what it looked like when it was new.
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| I did end up buying this cell phone charm later. |
We met up with all the people we had come to Hokkaido with. The restaurant had a few taxidermy bears inside.
At this restaurant you could eat in “Viking Style” or in buffet style. They also fed you unlimited crab. I was surprised how quickly I got tired of eating crab when there wasn’t any butter to eat with it. It was still good, but I did eat a lot of other things that were available, including some pretty good nigiri.
After the restaurant we walked around to the other side of the building where the canal was. All along the canal were ice lanterns with candles inside. They were set in the snow and along the walkways of the canal. There were a few sculptures where you could stop and take your picture, but there were so many people that I didn’t really want to.
When we finished walking along the illuminated canal we broke off from most everyone else and started walking around the town. We were in search of this one bar that had a good reputation.
We walked past this one building that was playing music into the street. So Cormac swept me up and started dancing with me in the street. A few Chinese tourists across the street saw us dancing and started hooting and hollering encouragement.
We finally made our way to the pub and it was a large building with three floors and it looked like an old Germanic building. All the waitresses and bartenders were dressed like old-timey European common folk. It was here we met back up with Felipe, Jojo and Chais.
There was a green beer on the menu, and I had to try it. It was really sweet and I loved it.
We spent a good hour and a half talking and joking around with everyone. I had to pee at one point and wandered off to find a restroom. I found it on the second floor. Near the restroom was a loft with more tables where you could look down on the floor below. I saw a dark hallway off to the left with a neglected piano sitting in it. I approached it to get a closer look and saw a doorway at the end of the dark hallway. My curiosity got the better of me and I started following the dark hallway. It was dimly lit with exit signs pointing towards the way I had come. The dark hallway had an incline, so I was headed towards the third floor. The hallway made three right hand turns while still climbing upwards. At one point I turned a corner and couldn’t see anything, this is when I started to feel spooked and my bravery had left me. I turned around and jogged back the way I had come until I emerged from the hallway with the broken piano.
I went back towards the stairs so I could rejoin my friends on the first floor. I then saw another staircase that went upwards. Again, I needed to go up. So I ascended the staircase. When I emerged from the stairwell I was in a large room with another bar and some tables. There was one light on in the center of the room hanging from the ceiling. It was a slow night, and I believe my friends and I were the only patrons in the building, but this was obviously a party room or overflow. I looked to the left and saw the entrance to the ramped hallway. I thought it would be cool to walk down that hallway again now that I knew where both ends were. But I started walking down again and felt really spooked. I turned right back around and walked through the abandoned party room and down the stairs and back to my friends. I had only been exploring for maybe an extra five minutes, so nobody was really worried about my absence.
We left the pub and started walking towards the train station so we could catch the last train to Sapporo. As we were walking we saw a lot of shopkeepers throwing their ice lanterns into the canals. This was because we had come on the last night of this lantern festival and there was no reason to keep the lanterns around. The boys grabbed some lanterns and started messing around.
Here is a tree that has different colored sections of bark. It looks like it was painted.
Here we are on the last strain of the evening.
We got back pretty late and we all crashed. We were exhausted.
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