On February 11th, my boyfriend and I spent a day in Otaru to go see the lights that were happening in the evening. Apparently there’s a famous event there called the Snow Light Path (translated), and the 11th was the first day of the event. I decided to spend the whole day to make the trip there worth it, so even though the lights were only from 5-9pm, we arrived earlier in the day to eat and walk around.
Before getting on the bus, we were both hungry and wanted something to eat before our first big meal there, so we stopped by our local Family Mart and each got a snack. I got the current seasonal chocolate eclair. Then, we got on the 9:30 bus to Otaru, and arrived a litle after 11. At first, I was thinking about going to an Italian-style place that my friend recommended, but since I wanted to try a bunch of local street food that day, my boyfriend wanted something ‘light’, and suggested ramen, since we also wanted to try a ramen place right next to the station that was also recommended by my friend. I mean, I didn’t mind ramen, and it was part of our original plan anyway, but by no means do I think ramen is lighter than pasta, but I digress…
The ramen was really good! We both got the rich miso ramen, which also came with small dish of garlic to add to your liking. The soup was a bit oily for my liking, but overall I liked the rich flavor and was very good for a cold snowy day. It came with a little bit of salmon flakes on top, along with a good variety of toppings, and my favorite part about it was the chashu. The meat was cut into chunks, but also wasn’t super fatty (or fatty-looking anyway, which I appreciate), was super tender, and flavorful, like it was marinated for a long time. The noodles were thick, springy, and yellow, but weren’t eggy, and I thought they complimented the soup well.
Since we had quite a bit of time to kill before the lights started, we walked around the city going to small places that I’ve been meaning to try. First, we walked to Chobicha Arare Midori, which specilizes in senbei, and my boyfriend and I each bought 2 basic senbei (90 yen each). I got a matcha one and a seweeed one. A little bit down the street was a branch store of Niikuraya, which sells dango and other mochi products. I wanted to try one of their skewers, but was feeling kind of full from ramen at the time, and thought I’d have time to stop by later for one (we didn’t end up going back, but perhaps someday when I’m in Otaru again…). After walking a bit, we did pick up a Hokkaido-limited haskap water from a vending machine, because it peaked both of our interests. I also found a wild Pokemon manhole!
My family is a huge fan of the peach water, and I liked the muscat water, though it tasted more like aloe juice than shine muscat. However, when I first smelled the haskap water, it smelled like a grape cough medicine, and the water tasted like that, except, well, watered down. It wasn’t as bad as cough medicine usually is, but it kind of dissapointed us as we’ve enjoyed all the other haskap things we’ve had here for far. Maybe it’s because there isn’t any actual juice used in the drink…
We decided to head to Sakaimachi street, which is the main shopping street that my friend showed us the last time. Along the way, I walked into a dorayaki specialty place called Cobasa, which sells a cool variety of flavors, and walked out with a Mitarashi Dango. Yes it’s a dorayaki place, but they also sell mochi and other small snacks, and since my boyfriend was feeling eh about dorayaki, I got a mitarashi dango because it looked good. Anyway, it was really good saucy chewy, grilled mochi.
When we got to Sakaimachi street, as we walked, I also took a bunch of pictures of the many small snow sculptures that were along the street. They were all super cute! We entered Rishiriya, a seaweed specialty store, at some point because I was looking for some wakame for my mom, and they gave us free konbu broth!
Kind of along the street was the Kamaei fishcake factory, and I wanted to try one of their freshly made and sold fishcakes. They had a bit of variety of flavors for sale, but I just got a giant plain one, because I’m a basic flavor kind of person. It tasted like, a regular fishcake, but hot and fresh.
Near the end of the street, we stopped by Fromage Danish LeTao, one of the many LeTao stores on the street. Originally, I wanted to come here for boba because I saw on Google Maps pictures that there used to be boba here, but they don’t have it anymore…instead, my boyfriend bought the Hokkaido melon dolche pudding latte. There were quite a lot of tourists we heard throughout the day, and I thought it was quite interesting that there were French people behind us in line! Usually I hear a lot of Chinese and Korean, and some English around here.
We still had a bit of time, so I figured it might be a good chance to check out Wing Bay, the local mall or shopping outlet in Otaru. There’s also (our favorite at this point, ha!) a Book Off across the street from the mall, so I figured we could go there too to check it out. The walking directions to both ended up kind of confusing from where we were, so we ended up skipping Wing Bay that day and just went to the Book Off, where my boyfriend bought a Switch. Also, they didn’t accept my membership app, because apparently they’re not a real Book Off? That was kind of weird.
When we were done at Book Off, we decided to head back to the main area, and also try our luck at LeTao Pathos, which has a cafe area. My boyfriend started wanting a parfait the day before, so I figured we could try one from Pathos. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, it was around 4, there was a 30 minute or so wait, and we had a dinner reservation at 5.
Originally, I had some other small snacks I wanted to get, but according to Google Maps, they both close at 6, and we’d probably be at dinner by then. Since we had some time, I stopped by Ungaya for their crab and genghis khan nikuman, which I think they’re known for and pretty unique, and my boyfriend also got their pudding. Then we went to Kuwataya for panju and to sit in their cafe area. Yes, I had a Kuwataya panju at Sapporo station, but I heard that this one has more flavors that the other one does’t have, plus this is the original location I think. I ended up getting a matcha flavored one. This was also around the time I started slipping and falling quite a bit…I took off my snow spikes before I went to Korea, and didn’t put them back on because I was lazy, and also recently around here I felt I didn’t need them. Otaru also usually has pretty good weather, but I didn’t expect it to snow quite a bit that day, and also for the weather to go from sunny to snowy throughout. I guess the constant weather shifting created freshly icy roads, which were not great for my non-spiked boots.
After chilling in the seating area for a bit and eating our buns, we killed a bit more time before our dinner reservation by checking out Otaru’s small anime shop. It was indeed very small, and had an interesting array of items. Speaking of anime, there were quite a few cosplayers we saw Otaru around the day. My boyfriend said he saw it was for an event, but we weren’t quite sure what event it was for, as we only saw cosplayers and not much else anime-related being advertised or whatnot. Anyway, we arrived at Kushidori for yakitori around 4:50 for our 5:00 reservation, and were seated right away. No pictures of dinner this time around, but we basically got most of the same stuff as last time, plus a few extra items from the menu.
We finished eating around 6, and headed for the lights venues, which consisted of a few around the site of the old Temiya Line, and Venue A, Venue B, and North area around the canal. There were other cute, small candles and lights along the way as well. Once we made our way to the canal from the restaurant, we started walking along the canal from the A Venue to the North side. To be honest, it was a little underwhelming at first, as I expected there to be bigger candles or brighter lights. Instead, there were a few small lights in the water along the canal, and the rest of the candles were in small pockets or scupltures of snow along the canal. The various sculptures were super cute, and very handmade looking and feeling. Apparently, according to my friend, people would come from overseas to volunteer for this event and build the scupltures and set up, I think I would have appreciated the vibe more if it wasn’t so crowded and we weren’t in a rush to go home, but overall a cute vibe. At the North Venue, there were some booths selling food, but the lines were super crowded and long, and we just had dinner anyway.
We aimed for the 7:20 bus home, and by the time we got to the station area, we had about 20-30 minutes to before our scheuled bus. Just enough time for me to stop by Mister Donut to get some donuts, and boba! Read about that here.
Japan Excursions 
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