Day 65: 4 June 2009

LOCATION: OTARU
MOOD: READY FOR A SEACHANGE
LISTENING TO: ELLEGARDEN – MARRY ME

VENICE IN JAPAN:

Even though my show in Hokkaido was short I was determined to go to more places than just Sapporo so today I made a short day trip to the port town of Otaru. The city's main attraction is its canal which runs along a fair distance of the town centre and is lined with gas lamps and 18^th/19^th century warehouses frozen in time from a period when Japan traded extensively with Russia as well as the US.

The view from Otaru Station. The main road leads all the way down to the bay.

This was honestly the last place I expected to find a gothic theme restaurant, but that's Japan for you.

The main attraction: Otaru's famous canal. I imagine it would be a lot more romantic at night, but the couples I saw there didn't seem to mind the wintery conditions.

The canal feeds into the bay at several points, and one end of the canal has been turned into a de facto harbour.

The 19^th century seems to be theme of the town's tourist attractions with Otaru also being home to a number of famous relics like the 130-year old Mitsui Banking Corporation and the Nishin-Goten mansion, but I contended myself with taking a stroll around the canal and the port area. To be honest by this point I was getting a little tired of rushing around to take photos of buildings and artifacts that held no particular interest for me so I spent the day walking around the town and enjoying the fresh sea breeze.

This is a compass showing the direction of a couple of major world cities. Melbourne, sadly (but not altogether unexpectedly), was not there.

The bay had a serene, breezy quality to it that was periodically interrupted by a blaring siren from a local factory that completely ruined the atmosphere.

The best way to keep warm on a cold day. Straight from the vending machine, no less.

This shop along the main street had some pretty cool T-Shirts. I particularly liked the one that had the Nike logo but read 'NEET'.
(NEET stands for Not in Employment, Education or Training, and has come to be a pejorative term for young people who flit between part time jobs and never want to grow up. In other words, most of Generation Y.)

I ended up having this for lunch. For some reason there seem to be lots of Italian-themed family restaurants in Japan. This one wasn't a Saizeriya, but it did remind me of one.