Hokkaido, here we come! Part 3 - Exploring Otaru

On our third day in Hokkaido, we decided to spend the day in a small nearby town called Otaru. Otaru is a port city known for things like their glasswork and music boxes. I actually signed us up for a music box making workshop that I was super excited for, so I couldn’t wait to visit this cute quaint town!

Morning Train to Otaru

We headed out bright and early to catch the first train out of Sapporo to Otaru. The train ride was about 30-40 minutes, and since many tourists were also on their way to Otaru, the train was quite crowded!

I was also shocked to see the ocean from the train window! So cool!

When we arrived at Otaru, we were met with town beautifully blanketed in pure white snow! It felt so idyllic to be here, almost like we were in Stars Hollow in the winter!

Otaru Orgel Doh Music Box Workshop

While doing some travel research into Otaru, I came across this cool workshop where you can build your own music box! There are a couple of different options where you can reserve a music box and just decorate it using their glass figurines, or you can assemble the whole thing. I was really excited by the idea of assembling my own, so we decided to go with that one!

Reserving the Workshop

To reserve a workshop, you’ll need to fill out a reservation form. In the form, you’ll choose your date and time, the number of people doing the workshop, and the music box set that you want to build. The bottom of this page has all of the music box configuration options you can choose from.

For each person, you’ll need to choose 3 possible songs to be your music box song from their available tracklist in order of preference. They state that they can’t guarantee you’ll get your first choice, but for my reservation, both Aldrin and I got our first song choice.

You’ll also need to pick the color of your glass beads (if you chose a music box that can be decorated).

After you submit your first and get confirmation, you’ll have your reservation booked! I printed out the confirmation my workshop and brought it with me for ease of confirmation once we got there.

I’m not exactly sure how early in advance you’ll need to make your booking. I made my reservation before we even left for our trip to Japan, so just make sure you give yourself enough time to get it booked and confirmed!

Getting to the Workshop

In your reservation confirmation, they’ll also provide a small map to get to the workshop. Take note that the workshop location is not at the actual Music Box Museum, which is a separate building. It’s a very short walk away (about a block) from the museum though, and is very easy to find!

Building a Music Box

Once we checked in and got our work station set up, we got to work assembling our music box!

The workshop itself was mostly self-paced, and they also provided an English step by step guide. The workers did help us get started and checked in every so often to make sure we weren’t stuck, which was really nice!

It was really cool to see all the different parts of the music box, and the setup was very straightforward so it wasn’t hard to follow the guide at all.

The most challenging part was aligning the pins of the music box barrel with the metal comb prongs properly to get a nice clear sound. The comb needs to be a set distance away from the pins and it needs to be as evenly spaced as possible so that the sound coming out is loud and not twangy. This ended up taking us at least an hour to do because we wanted to get the sound right!

The music box I chose came with a decoration set, so after our assembly was finished, I got to work decorating! Since I didn’t really want to use the pre-chosen glass figurines, I purchased two additional ones of my own from the workshop’s glass figurine shop.

Since I chose ‘Let it Go’ as my music box song, I really wanted to do a little Frozen-themed decoration, but nothing really called out to me. But then I stumbled upon a shimaenaga glass figurine and I knew I had to get it!

After I set up my little winterscape with the provided epoxy glue, we notified the employees and they stowed our boxes for us for the day while the glue cured. We had to leave the boxes for at least one hour but could pick them up anytime before the closed for the day, so we spent the rest of the day strolling through Otaru and picked up our music boxes before we headed home for the day.

Exploring Otaru

We walked through the streets of Otaru in the snow checking out the small shops along the way.

This was a really cute little area and it was actually quite busy with tourists also going around and exploring as well. There were actually so many tourists I heard more foreign languages around this area than Japanese.

Otaru Canal

If you search for Otaru online, you’ll most likely find photos of the Otaru Canal. It’s a very picturesque spot in Otaru that’s beautiful all year long, and we were lucky enough to see it dressed in snow! The buildings lining the canal are old warehouses that have become shops and museums.

This is a really cute spot that’s great for photos! Of course, there’s many tourists in this area trying to get photos as well, so there are crowds to be dealt with.

Lunch: Seafood Bowls

For lunch we headed the Sankaku Market area which is known for their seafood bowls. This area is similar to Nijo Market where there seafood markets and restaurants lining a very tight street.

When we got there it was so crowded you could barely get through the street, lines for restaurants were hours long, and lots of them had already run out of seafood.

So we decided to change our plans and find a different spot to grab so lunch.

Walking through Otaru we came across another seafood bowl restaurant called Sawasaki Suisan.

Sawasaki Suisan is set up in a pretty interesting way. There are 3 small buildings that make up the business and within each building is a bar style setup. The space is super cramped so as soon as you open the door, the bar chair is right in front of you. To get a seat, you need to wait outside until seats in the bar become available. As with a lot of businesses in the Hokkaido area that we visited, this place was also cash only.

After looking at the menu, you give your order to the chef who prepares the bowl in front of you.

The bowls here were super delicious. This might have been my favorite seafood bowl spot that we tried during this trip. The fish was really fresh and flavorful. It was oceanic but not too fishy. And the uni in this bowl was really nice and sweet. The rice was also cooked really well and tasted good too!

Dessert: LeTAO

LeTAO is a confectionary store that was founded in Otaru and is famous for their double fromage Japanese cheesecake. Since we were in the area, we absolutely had to stop by!

We got a slice of their double fromage cheesecake as well as their soft cream. I also tried a haskap parfait which came with haskap syrup and real haskap fruits!

The cheesecake was soo good! It was so fluffy and light, and the cheese was just so tasty! I wish I could get more of this cheesecake!

The soft cream was also really good! It was very milky and rich. The haskap in my parfait was really tart, which I thought went really well with the soft cream since it kind of balanced out the creaminess.

Heading back to Sapporo

After we explored the area for most of the day, we decided to head back to Sapporo in the early evening. Since the snow was building, we didn’t want any train delays or cancellations preventing us from getting back to Sapporo since there weren’t too many going back and forth to begin with.

Dinner: Yakiniku

Since we were back in Sapporo by dinnertime, we went to look for something to eat.

Unlike the experience we had on our first night in Sapporo, this time, everywhere was so crowded! I’m not sure what was going on that first night or where everyone went, but this night was not at all like that. Every restaurant we tried to eat at was full for the night or only took reservations, so we almost gave up and settled on fast food chain or the convenience store.

But luckily, a yakiniku restaurant called Ushinoya had space for us! Ushinoya is a very no-frills kind of yakiniku spot. The tables and menus are a little sticky, the tables are pretty crammed together, and it’s not the cleanest place. But the prices were quite affordable, the service was efficient, and the food was good! We ordered the wagyu yakiniku set and it was a decent price for good tasting and good quality meat. We also added on a few more orders of meat as well, and the whole meal came out to about $55 dollars for the two of us.

Sapporo White Illumination

In the winter, Sapporo has several illumination events that are beautifully set up with lights.

While we were in Sapporo, Odori Park, which was near our hotel, has the White Illumination event happening! We stopped by one portion of the park to check it out. It actually spanned several blocks, each with a different setup, but even though we only had time to check out one, it was really pretty!

Day 2 Recap

And with that our last day in Sapporo came to an end!

Checking out Otaru was a pretty fun experience. I loved seeing what a small town in the snow looked like. And getting to build the music box was a really fun and unique experience!

One thing I couldn’t help noticing throughout the day is just how many tourists there were everywhere we went. The prevalent language we heard all throughout the day was Mandarin instead of Japanese, so I gather that this is a very popular destination for Chinese tourists.

Most places were quite crowded, but overall I still had a lot of fun!

Another thing I didn’t realize was how difficult it could be to find a restaurant to eat at. I’m not exactly sure if restaurants take reservations every day or just on busy days, but not being a local, I wasn’t able to communicate or make reservations in advance. So it doesn’t feel like Sapporo is the type of place where you can just drop in or just wait in a line at a place you want to try. Something I’ll definitely keep in mind if I visit again in the future!

In my next post, we’re headed to our next Hokkaido destination: Hakodate!