Hello everyone. Sorry for the no post on the weekend as it was my rest day. Needed my rest so badly. Continuing from where I left on my last post, I've reached Otaru somewhere around 12pm. There's plenty of time for us to take a walk. However, the central of attraction of Otaru needs a bit of walking from the train station itself... oh... it's not that far... it's just 8 blocks walk. Hehe! Added with constant cold breeze from the sea and the tempreature of 18c, I did fine.
The Otaru Canal (小樽運河) or known as the Otaru Unga, used to be the city's busy harbour in the early 20th century. The large vessels had to be unloaded by smaller ships, which then transported the goods to warehouses along the canal. However, when the modern dock facilities were constructed nearby, this canal now became a major tourist attraction area where the warehouses were transformed into shops, museums and restaurants. The canal makes for a pleasant scroll during the day, when various artists present their works and it was a very fine sunny day in Otaru.
Asakusa Bridge Tourist Information Center is at the end of the Otaru Canal and I managed to grab a shot of the an old guy wearing the authentic clothes which potrays the historical Japanese which still lives at large in Japan these days.
The Denukikoji was located opposite of the information center. From far, it may looked like a Japanese temple but it's not. It's a small business district area.
This narrow little area is part of the Denukikoji business district where it houses a souvenier shop and several bars which will only open at night. 
We cut through from Rinkosen Street to the Sakaimachihondori Street where all the authentic shops are located. This place has a mixture of both old and new building concepts lined up from the start to the end of the street. In summer, this street will be one of the busiest streets where most of the tourists will flock this area as this area are full of shops; selling plenty of stuffs ranging from dried goods to souveniers.
This little woodshed has its 2 very obedient dogs sitted at the main entrance as many passerby would come and pat on their heads... without having to have their hands bitten off. The owners did extremely well training their dogs. I've even took my chances on patting them and they are not even bothered. Of course, my hands were soaked with doggy sweat after the pat. :-P
Now because Otaru is famous for its port, did I mention that Otaru is also one of the biggest fishing village around Hokkaido? This place is crawling with seafood that you can buy it off anytime at the local fishmonger ranging from multiple types of fish, prawns and King Crabs. And no... you don't find those tiny drain crabs that we normally get in Malaysia. We are talking about those extremely huge ones.
These King Crabs doesn't look very very handsome now... does it? Hehe! 
Freshly steamed crabs or corns anyone?
As I mentioned earlier, there's plenty of souvenier shops around and let me introduce you to a place which is quite famous. Kitakaro is a company largely famous for its pastries. Yielded from the island of Hokkaido, this little company started back in April 1991. 
As I walked into this store, this place were famous for its layer cake which were freshly baked straight out of the oven, cut and packed... ready to be sold to customer. Not only that, this place also sells other pasteries and even houses a little cafe.
Kitakaro Cafe opens from 9am to 4:30pm daily and they only sells cream puffs, vanilla ice cream and drinks. We ordered the combo which consists of a cream puff of your choice, a cup of drink and a small little cup of ice cream... which costs about 500 Yen. I've ordered 2 sets as mom and dad settled down to enjoy our little stop. 
Mom and dad enjoyed their freshly brewed coffee while for myself, I indulge into the good looking cream puffs. To be dead honest with you, if you ever stop over to Kitakaro, never ever say no to their cream puffs. It's too heavenly for me to explain. It may look plain on the outside, but the inside... it tastes so nice that it's better than a million diamonds. I've never tasted such great cream puffs in my entire life!
Next to Kitakaro is the Rokkatei. Rokkatei is another famous store which was established in the year 1933. Famous for its chocolates and sweets, no wonder mom and dad bought a bag full of it. 
LeTAO is one of the dessert shop located at the end of the Sakaimchihondori Street. You probably wouldn't miss it as the dessert shop has a huge clock tower. 
Opposite of LeTAO was the Otaru Orgel Doh, a shop famous of making cuckoo clocks as well as antique tick tock clocks. I didn't went in to this shop but according to dad, inside has a lot of weird looking clocks which were made and ready to be sold to the customers... and it wasn't cheap. The reason why I wasn't interested of going in was because there's a bunch of Taiwanese visitors just flocked into the shop. You won't be seeing anything when they are around.
We head back down Sakaimchihondori Street to stop over at Kita No Ryoba, a local Japanese restaurants that offers grilled seafood, sushi and ramen. 
Grilled squid tentacles and grilled squid. It tastes nice when it was grilled over soya sauce and some sea salt rubbed inside the squid.
And my bowl of Char Siew Ramen (mind my picture as the quality wasn't that good... I was too hungry for a bowl of Ramen and shook my camera). It's a bit salty, still acceptable over a glass of Sapporo beer. 
By the time we are done visiting Otaru, it was almost 3pm. Time for us to head back to Sapporo and as tired as I was, I slept all the way back riding the Rapid Airport train. Overall, the little city of Otaru is a nice place to visit, provided with a nice day and cool weather, it turns out to be a memorable place to come to. Until the next blog post, I'll leave with some last set of pictures taken of Otaru.
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