Continued from post here.
We checked out of the Sapporo Grand hotel in the morning and all got on our car. Our plan was to drive to our ryokan in Niseko called Zaborin, which was a three and a half hour drive away. We planned to make stops at Otaru and Shatokan along the way to break up the trip and enjoy the coastal towns and key attractions along the shores of the Sea of Japan.
First up is Otaru which is a 30 minute drive northwest of Sapporo. It is a small port town famous for its beautifully preserved canal and the many old converted warehouses that are transformed into restaurants and shops. It is also known for its glasswork, music boxes, and sake distilleries.
Parking was pretty easy to find. We choose one that was near the Sakaimichi Street, which is famous with tourists for its shops such as the Music Box Museum, Le Tao Cafe, and two famous pastry shops, Kitakaro and Rokkatei. Since we had limited time, we just walked by Sakaimichi and headed to our first bite of the day.
While there are over 100 sushi restaurants in the small town of Otaru and even a Sushi Street with over 26 shops in a two block radius, we decided to skip sushi, but instead had the hanashinage chicken from Wakadori Jidai Naruto Honten for our early lunch. It was better than finger licking good, and the Colonel would quit his job if he had a bite. You can read the full review of the shop here.
After lunch, we walked towards the canal area and found a LeTao pastry shop. There are 6 LeTao cafes in Otaru. You cannot find any sit down cafes of LeTao outside of Otaru, only small take out stalls in Sapporo and at New Chitose airport,
There is a pretty big selection at this store and you can also order hot cocoa and soft serve.
What LeTao is famous for is their Double Frommage Cheesecake.
We could not resist and ordered a slice to try. It consists primarily of two layers The upper layer is make of unbaked cheesecake, while the bottom is made of soft baked cheesecake.
The cheesecake was delicious. The upper layer is light and milky, while the bottom portion is soft and rich. The combination is perfection in the mouth and it is not too sweet, just perfectly balanced. So far Hokkaido cheesecake already added 5 pounds to our waistlines. That did not stop us from ordering a whole cake for later.
We walked a little further, towards the JR Station, which is claimed to have a good vantage point of the small town. After some quick pictures, we headed towards the canal.
The Otaru canal was an important link for small boats to load their cargo and transport them to the warehouse from larger ocean vessels in the first half of the 20th century. However, when modern docking facilities were built and implemented, the canal became obsolete.
Instead of destroying and rebuilding the canal, Otaru preserved it and it is one of the major attractions of the small town. You can see the lamps actually still the old style gas lamps and they are lighted at night. It supposedly is a sight to see during nighttime but this was not in our plans.
After a nice walk along the canal, we could not leave before visiting Kita No Aisu Ya San. This shop sells ice cream, and while Otaru has many soft serve ice cream shops, this one has many unique flavors.
The menu is hand written and conveniently has three languages. You’ll notice right away flavors like squid ink, sea urchin, and even natto being offered.
Our children would order the more traditional flavors such as vanilla and chocolate, and even white beat. However, my wife and I are more experimental.
I ordered a combination of squid ink and uni. The taste of the squid ink wasn’t much as I mostly tasted the smooth and creamy flavor of the Hokkaido milk used to make the ice cream. Also if you had squid ink, you’ll know for the most part it has a slight ocean taste and a slight acidity, all this is over powered by the richness of the Hokkaido milk.
The uni ice cream, however, was a different story. You actually can taste that ocean taste of the uni in the ice cream, and it works. Uni is like foie gras and it works really well with the Hokkaido cream. Overall it was surprisingly good.
My wife went for the rose and beer flavor. The rose was nice and florally, while the beer did not have a strong taste, so you get mostly the cream. We also tasted the natto, and while the ice cream tasted like the fermented soy beans, the combination as an ice cream was too much. All in all, we had a great time with the flavors.
On the way walking back to the car, I could not help but notice that the drain water is really clear.
This wraps up our shot visit to Otaru. It’s small town so it is easy to visit all the attractions if we stayed another couple of hours, but unfortunately you can’t eat all the great eats this town has to offer. Perhaps next time, I’ll give its sushi a try as well as some of their other specialities, but up next is our drive to Shatokan.