Our last stop in Japan was at the port city nearest to Sapporo. We have become tired of riding on buses long distances for a short tour of some new city. And we found that Otaru is an easy city to walk around and is famous for glass. Right up my alley. So we didn’t take the tour we booked months ago and just walked.
Not that I can read Japanese, but this is the sign at the dock greeting our ship. I am certain it says Otaru. From our ship we had to walk perhaps a quarter mile then turn left. This was a shopping street more than a mile long. It had shops representing several different local glass companies, a glass museum and about a hundred or more restaurants. We had great fun.
This was one of the glass companies with its own museum. Impressive building. But this city is fairly far north. So it is cold for the first time on our cruise. There is snow visible on the hills around the city. And there are creeks running through the city with lots of melted snow. We wore our coats for the first time.
Notice the snow fences just behind the shops along this shopping street. When they get snow, they must really get snow. Glad that didn’t happen.
But we did shop. Kathy bought some earrings and a glass nail file. I had never heard of a glass nail file. Then we found two really pretty wine glasses. So we added to our collection. These are our anniversary gifts to each other since tomorrow is our anniversary.
As we walked around our city there were still some of the cherry trees in bloom. They were past their peak but still pretty. Sapporo is most famous for these trees so we thought we might miss seeing these trees once we cancelled our Sapporo excursion. Lucky for us we still saw a few.
As our ship sailed away from the port we went by the dock wall with the lighthouse. On to Russia.
Johnson's Travel 