November 23rd here happens to be a holiday this year, and aligns with American Thanksgiving, and also happens to be Japanese Labor Thanksgiving. Apparently the holiday is about being thankful and celebrating the labor people put into harvest, which is similar to American Labor Day and Thanksgiving combined (go figure). My boyfriend wanted to go to Otaru to get some souvenirs for his trip home, and coincidentally a friend was visiting Otaru at the same time.
Otaru is a much shorter bus ride than Sapporo, but we wanted to get there early, so getting on our usual early bus, we arrived in Otaru around 9:10. My friend wanted to meet up at 10, so we headed to the Sankaku Market right next to the station to see if we could get some fresh fish for breakfast, hopefully without a line. Some of the eateries were full and did have quite a few customers, but Ajidokoro Takeda was open next to Kawashima where I ate last time, so we got some seats there right away. What’s cool is that you order on a tablet at your table, and there’s English and Japanese written. There wasn’t a kaisen bowl combination I liked, so I opted for a freshly grilled set meal (which turned out to be a good thing, as my boyfriend’s bowl used sushi rice). I went with the sablefish because it seemed like a unique option. My boyfriend got a salmon bowl for himself (not pictured). We also got some sashimi to share, sablefish and an assorted plate of salmon, octopus, sweet shrimp, scallop, conch, and this shrimp-like thing I have no idea what it’s called. My boyfriend chose the sablefish because it was in the daily limited menu, but I didn’t realize that it was actually the same grilled item that I got, ha! It was interesting comparing the two serving methods. For anyone visiting Sankaku Market, Takeda is cash only, with PayPay as an option.
I liked my set meal! The sides all had different flavors and textures to them, with the mayo salad, the pickled cucumbers. and the dried fish. The grilled sablefish was absolutely perfect! It was super tender, and also very buttery, with an amazing, light yet rich flavor to it. The sashimi plate was overall very satisfying, as the salmon pieces were plump and thick, the scallop came whole and very satisfying, the sweet shrimp was perfect, and surprisingly, the not-shrimp thing tasted like a cross between a shrimp and a lobster. Very interesting. I like conch from time to time, but the octopus as usual was very chewy, almost impossible to swallow. The sablefish sashimi was very interesting, very chewy (not as bad as the octopus), but flavor-wise like a white fish. I also had a coupon, so we got free bags of the initial dried squid appetizer.
We met up with my friend around 10 at the station, and I gave him the brief rundown of what there is to do around Otaru: we walked in the direction of the canal, climbed up the Denukoji tower, and walked along Sakaimachi. Along the way, we popped into all the souvenir stores possible.
We basically finished our tour around 12:30, and he wanted to explore the rest on his own, so we split up from there. With nothing else much to do, we made our way back down Sakaimachi, briefly stopping at the Miyuki stand that sells sodas, mochi, and various other snacks. My boyfriend was interested in the shine muscat candy and the haskap soda, so we got one of each to split/
toured otaru 1100 mochi place cash 500 haskap soda 550 him
It was both of our first time’s having a candied fruit snack, and I know tanghulu is popular is all parts of Asia. That being said, it took some mental effort to bite the outside hard sugar layer, and that really contrasted with the softness of the grape. To be honest, I’d rather eat grapes on their own as the sugariness takes away from the grape flavor…but I can see how this would go well with the classic strawberry, with the slight sourness they can have. The haskap soda was pretty good, and not grape-like, but more along the slightly sour berry flavor spectrum.
Our last stop of the day was at Mister Donut for two purposes: the new Pokemon donut campaign (that might be yearly?), and for boba, obviously. When we got there, I was quite sad that they didn’t seem to even have the classic Pikachu one as a choice, but had the new Psyduck (whip cream and caramel custard chocolate for 302 yen), Pokeball (strawberry and white chocolate with strawberry sugar for 237 yen), and the two Snorlax’s favorites (custard and whipped cream or chocolate and whipped cream for 205 yen). The pokeball one wasn’t even available when I was ordering (picture shown), but right after I paid, they restocked, so I got one. We got one of each except the custard Snorlax one, and two bobas.
The chocolate snorlax one was pretty good, but it was basically a chocolate whip-filled donut topped with cocoa powder in a Snorlax packaging. I liked how soft it was. As for the Pokeball, the white half came cleanly off the red half, with the white one tasting like white chocolate, and the red one like strawberry chocolate with crunchy candy. I’m sure both wold have been great eaten as soon as we got them, but for eating them a few days later, they still tasted pretty good.
Read about my boba here!
Kind of short, but that was my day out! We left on the 1:15 bus, and bought ingredients for hot pot for Thanksgiving dinner at home.
Japan Excursions 
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