A chilly and partly cloudy day greets us this morning, as we go through our normal routines.  Once the ship is cleared, we are on the gangway and out of the port area in a heartbeat.  Our plans today are to go up to the Botanical gardens, then hit all the museums in town afterward.  We thought about walking up to the gardens, but most of it is straight uphill, so common sense dictates a taxi – which is what we do.  Putting a little distance between us and the ship, we order a Grab taxi – which ends up being a taxi that is sitting in the back of the queue waiting for cruise passengers – works out perfect for him! – and up we go to the gardens.  Oh, good decision on Grab, it is straight uphill. We would not have been happy campers had we walked!

Once on top of the hillside, the gardens were amazing. First of all, we were up there all by ourselves, not another soul in sight.  Secondly, the leaves were just turning making for beautiful views out across the harbor to the far mountains.  Gorgeous. 

Wandering around, we find an abandoned (or at least closed up) Temple with a lovely little garden and pond, so pretty with the fall colors all around. 

After a half an hour or so, we retrace our course, this time walking down into town (much nicer walk, thank you!) snapping photos of gates and fields and repurposed downed trees used as picnic benches. Making for a lovely, but chilly, morning jaunt.

As we are walking toward town, we begin what will be a theme throughout this trip – manhole cover photos!  Ian has turned us on to the fact that every city has a specially designed manhole cover just for their city or prefecture – so now that we are on the lookout we find our first – sweet little otters!  Significance?  Don’t know.  Photographability?  A definite A+!

Reaching sea level yet again, we make our first stop at the Otaru Museum, which is essentially a railroad museum.  Otaru is the birthplace of the Hokkaido Railway and the first place to use electrification for trains.  A huge source of pride here, judging from this massive facility with all varieties of trains, cars, locomotives and snowplows.  Yes, these massive snowplows, because it really snows up here a lot in the winter – remember, we’re only 45 minutes from Sapporo here.  Very fun walking around looking at all the trains, and Ed of course is in his glory – Mr. Train/Tram/Automotive man!

The property includes the former Temiya Railway facilities with a huge turntable and roundhouse that houses original steam locomotives and engines and plows and loads of interesting old Train paraphernalia.  Makes for nice explorations out in the brisk fresh air. 

There is also a little ironworks building with intriguing tools on display – and the one of those little bike/motorbike vehicles they use to check the rails.  Plus a monstrous 2 story museum with loads of information on the railway, the trains, electrification, everything you’d ever want to know about the Hokkaida rail system.  Nice little morning interlude.

Leaving the museum, we saw a ¥100 coin store across the street.  Oh yeah – have to go there.  Located in the back of a big Home and Garden (think Lowes) store, it is a true 1-coin store. Like a store within a store. Weird.  But hey, we aren’t complaining, we love these places.  They are just fun to peruse around.  We ended up buying more socks. Don’t ask.  Ok, ask!  Tactical packing error, we brought new socks that were compression and after wearing them for a while figured out they hurt more than helped.  Thus, we need regular socks.  Plus – they have really, really cute socks here!  Panda bears!  For me, of course, Ed just got some plain ones.

Shopping excursion done, we headed back into town proper for the history museum because you could buy a pass with the train museum.  Walking past some great architecture – an ice cream shop that uses slices of trees as ornamentation on the outside walls, where people sign their names or draw little cartoons – totally different.  Continuing on to walk alongside the 1 km long Otaru canal, originally constructed to be used as a waterway for barges to take goods from cargo ships moored in the harbor into town.  When the new port facility was developed, the canals became superfluous and are now used as a tourist attraction offering canalboat rides up and down.  We will follow the canal all the way into the main town, passing landmarks such as the building that housed one of the main importers in the time, the Nihon Yusen Company – looking more like a state house – past numerous boats, some made for transport, some just whimsical (and we think a bar in the later afternoons!) – and lots of great statues before reaching our History museum destination.

The museum itself is a nice little place, full of miniature building replicas, life size recreations of old shops and commerce in the streets as well as displays from even before the industrial civilization – complete with bunnies in the snow and indigenous Japanese forebearers.  Plus odds and ends like the Shiusarako (fish like statue – said to be the tail of a bird – eh – don’t see it! Tail of a fish, yes, bird, no.  Could be the translation.) decoration that are attached to both ends of the roof.  All very interesting – and when we leave, we look up and there is an actual Shiusarako in use today. 

History done, it is time for lunch.  Especially because it is a little early and this place is crowded with tourists – not just from the ship – and you know how it is here – you need to be early to get a seat in most of these places because they are so, so small.  And true to course, we find this little place called Robataya Turukichi that has “limited seating,” yes they do!  Maybe 12 seats inside and a couple of stools outside?  They have just opened, thankfully, so no waiting, as we pull up our stools and order a grilled scallop, grilled squid and a grilled rice ball (had to try that!).  We sip on our beer and wine (bonus) while we watch the proprietress grab our order from the display cabinet in front of the counter and begin to grill our lunch.  She brings us small appetizers with the drinks (clueless as to what they were but they were good) and when she delivers our food – oh heaven.   The best. The squid was tender and perfectly done – and large.  The scallop was huge and sweet and wonderful and that grilled rice ball. That rice ball was the best thing ever…ever. The whole thing was just wonderful, and it was just the two of us sitting there in this little, teeny tiny place watching everyone pass by – not knowing what they were missing.  Fantastic.

Since we were in the area, we decided that we would go to the Glass Museum next – then on to the Music Box Museum.  Arriving at the Glass Museum though, we realized it wasn’t really a museum, but a shop. Disappointing.  Otaru has a reputation for glassworks, but every place we went was a shop, never a museum. Even the maps listed these places as museums.  Ok, well then ditch the Music Box “Museum.” We want exhibits not price tags. At least the walk wasn’t wasted – there are great statues and decorations to see as we move back through the town.

Salvaging the day, we go to the to the stained glass museum, which really was a museum, housed in an old storehouse for soybeans.  There are about 100 stained glass windows, lit from behind, that almost glow in the darkness of this mammoth 2 story wood warehouse. There is also a really interesting display all about the steps taken to create a stained glass window along with a video showing an artist making one.  All in all, amazingly weirdly strangely cool, but even weirder because all the windows came from St. John’s Episcopal Church, a defunct church in Jersey City, New Jersey. Why are they here?  Bizarre, but really, really beautiful and interesting .

From there, we decided we wanted a drink, so we walked along the other side of the canal to the local brewery, Otaru brewery. We were only going to get a beer, but they had some great snacks and ended up ordering this thing called bridge bread. It was this mini loaf of bread that they made into a bridge shape and stuffed it with mozzarella and I don’t know, grilled?  Accompanied with an awesome garlic butter sauce. It looked so cool – and it tasted so good. We also went with the German theme and ordered some Munich White Sausage (when in Germany, oh, I mean Japan…) which were tasty as well.  The beer was good too – I ended up with a raspberry beer that was described as being very popular with the women. Okie dokie! Well, it was popular with me!  Ed went with the standard Weiss and we were both happy. Even though it was really westernized, it was still fun.

It is still early, and we weren’t ready to go back to the ship quite yet. Commence wandering!  We walked along the canal, looked into lots of stores and a couple of restaurants, laughing at the translations.  Really, who thought it was a good idea to translate the chicken dish as “Saliva Chicken”?  That’s the restaurant’s translation!  When you translate using an app – you get “drooling chicken” but also “mouthwatering chicken.”  Think I’d choose the mouthwatering description!

Our wanderings finally end at the Nitori Museum of Art, a mix of Japanese and Western-style paintings and sculptures which was fun and interesting.  Here again, though, we couldn’t take any pictures which was really a bummer because they had some very gorgeous wood carvings and glass work and silk screen wall hangings. Oh well. They did have more stained glass windows that we were allowed to photograph.  Otherwise, it was a nice diversion that let us stay out a little longer.

By the time we finished, it was about three o’clock and we decided it was time to go back to ship, which is what we did!  The rest of the afternoon was spent as usual – gym, drinks, balcony for sail away shots in the early dusk, then dinner in the Lido.  It’s Asian night!  We cannot pass up Asian night.  Sushi and pot stickers and spring rolls. And then we can sample the fish from the main dining room – but small portions of each so we can try them all.  Oh – and this awesome parmesan fried zucchini!  If we were in the restaurant we’d have to order 4 entrees just to get a taste – this way we just ask for one small piece and it is like grazing.  Yummo.

Dinner complete, we hit Ocean’s bar for our drinks (it is a strategy thing) then walk down to the theater for the British comedian, who now lives in Australia, and who is quite entertaining.  Then to the balcony for rest of our evening.