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Otaru is a pilgrimage site for fans of Love Letter. Neither my husband nor I have seen it, so we visited purely as tourists.

Our stay at 41 PIECES in Sapporo did not include breakfast, so that morning we reheated the leftover rice from the night before, and it smelled amazing. Then we took a taxi to JR Sapporo Station. There are many trains from Sapporo to Otaru, and we happened to catch an express. This express train has one reserved car, but that train was already sold out, so we had to stand in the non-reserved section all the way to Otaru.

This express does not stop at Asari Station, where Love Letter begins. If you want to check in at Asari Station, please take a local train.

It took a little over half an hour for the express to reach Minami-Otaru Station, and we planned to head north from there, then return from Otaru Station at the end.

Our first stop was the Otaru Music Box Museum Main Building. It’s pretty big, with three floors, and sells all kinds of music boxes.

The music boxes in the shop were truly dazzling, and we spent a long time browsing inside. At our kid’s request, we bought a fairly large piano music box. There’s also a Ghibli section on the third floor.

After that we continued on to the LeTao main store. There was a huge line at the café upstairs, which scared us enough to retreat downstairs and buy a seasonal mini cake instead. I have to say, LeTao’s cheesecake really is incredibly smooth!

Otaru has countless glassware shops. The two most famous brands are Taisho Glass and Kitaichi Glass. Both brands have opened many small shops all along Otaru’s main street, and the glass items sold at these stores seem to come from different series. As an outsider, I honestly couldn’t make sense of it.

You can also sign up for a glassmaking class, but you can’t take the finished piece home that day; they mail it to you later.

Many of the glassware shops don’t allow photos, which was a pity—I couldn’t keep these exquisite glass pieces as souvenirs in pictures.
By lunchtime, we took a taxi to Sawasaki Suisan at Denuki Koji for seafood rice bowls. This place has a Tabelog rating of 3.56: https://tabelog.com/hokkaido/A0106/A010601/1000753/

It was probably the smallest restaurant we had been to in Japan. The moment the door opened, you were already at the seats, and people sitting farther inside had to wait until someone at the entrance moved before they could get in. Our kid’s stroller could only be left outside.

Denuki Koji is basically a very small food-street-like area with only a handful of shops. Since our kid couldn’t eat raw fish, after we sat down and ordered, I took the kid to a nearby shop to buy buns and grilled corn and a few other things. While we were eating, the kid was kept outside the door eating too, which felt especially funny. Luckily there weren’t many people around.

The owner is an elderly gentleman. While making the seafood rice bowls, he chatted with me for a bit, and that was another moment where I had to pull out my broken Japanese. When he asked how I found the place, I said Tabelog. He replied, “Tabelog da-me.” He also said his shop is very popular among Chinese visitors.

The seafood rice bowls were pretty good! Slightly worse than the famous place in Hakodate, but still delicious. The portion was a bit small, though, and I didn’t feel quite full.

One bowl was a mixed seafood rice bowl, and the other was uni kame-don.

After lunch, we took a taxi to the day’s only reserved activity: the Blue Cave. I booked through https://otaru-gb.jp/; you can just send them a message on the website to make a reservation, and they reply pretty quickly. The location is quite remote, next to the Otaru Aquarium. You can’t really get a taxi nearby, so you have to ask the shop to call one for you.

The special feature of this boat is its glass bottom, but in reality it only has a window in the middle where you can look down; the entire boat is not made of glass. Honestly, I don’t think it was worth traveling that far, since there are also plenty of tour companies around Otaru’s main street and canal area.

Still, the service at this place was pretty good. They stored all our belongings before boarding. The toilet was tiny—there was barely room to turn around. Everyone was given a life jacket.

a tour guide was a kind and friendly Japanese uncle. Most of the time he spoke Japanese, and since our family was the only non-Japanese group on the boat, he would occasionally explain things to us in Japanese-style English as well. He was very enthusiastic.

The sea was a bit rough that day, so my travel companion and I both took motion-sickness medicine in advance.

The water was still very clear.

When we reached the cave entrance, there were a few boats nearby, as well as people paddling in on SUPs, all lining up to go in. Only one boat can enter the cave at a time. While waiting in line, we wandered around nearby for a bit.

Finally it was our turn. Our kid was terrified—afraid of the dark, and afraid the boat would hit the rock wall and sink.

Once we entered the cave, it felt a bit like the Water Curtain Cave, with very strong echoes. The uncle guide was really skillful; he could maneuver such a large boat so nimbly inside such a small cave.The older man kept moving around and trying different angles so everyone could get good photos.

Some people even came by kayak.

After we came out of the cave, the guide kindly took photos for each family one by one.

After we got back on shore, the guide carried a small basket with starfish, sea urchins, and other things to touch.

After that, we took a taxi back to the glass shops and kept browsing where we had been before lunch.

We bought an egg waffle, but it wasn’t good, nowhere near Happy Lemon. We also bought the konnyaku soap we’d been wanting so badly, which we had missed in Hakodate.

We came across a glass shop that didn’t say no photos, so I took a few. Everything was so beautiful that if we brought it home, we’d almost have to enshrine it and never use it.

There was a Snoopy specialty store.

A chopsticks specialty store, with some very cute items.

We also stopped by Sapporo Drug Store. We were inexperienced and should have looked up coupons online first. At checkout, the clerk said there were no coupons, so I thought that was that—but the moment after I paid, I found a usable coupon on Google.

The entrance to Romantic Hall really did look romantic, and inside was all kinds of crafts.

The kid liked a bracelet, but I said no.

We passed by Dezuka Alley again.

In the end, we arrived at the Otaru Canal.

By then we were completely exhausted and couldn’t walk any farther, so we took a taxi to Otaru JR Station. We happened to catch another express train, so it looked like Asari Station and we were never meant to be.

The train car was still fairly empty, so at last we didn’t have to stand the whole way back.

From the JR station, we took the subway to dinner.

That evening we had booked Takyuzushi, also arranged by the hotel. tabelog 3.76: https://tabelog.com/cn/hokkaido/A0101/A010102/1030580/

This place wasn’t hard to book; there were plenty of openings on tabelog.

Because we had a child with us, we were seated in a private room right next to the counter, in a separate space. One server took care of us.

The server’s English was good and she was very professional. If there was anything she didn’t understand, she would ask the itamae to make sure and then come back with an answer.

The first dish was abalone with abalone liver sauce, a classic pairing. I thought it was pretty good.

The uni in this course was sweet and fresh. It made me once again think that Hokkaido really lives up to its reputation as a uni-producing region, and the seafood quality here is excellent.

Starting around this course, we began to feel a little disappointed — you could tell the sushi was still very good, but the seasoning was a bit too salty for us. Looking back, maybe we should have told the server?

Every dish after that had us going: so tasty! But too salty.

This grilled fish dish was the same way: overall it was really well done, and the skin was especially crispy, but the fish skin was so salty.

Things started to go downhill a bit here. The sushi was served several pieces at a time, which was probably just the way it works in a private room. There was even a grain of rice left off to the side on this plate. A lot of restaurants do distinguish between private rooms and counter seating, but I felt our private room was basically right next to the counter anyway. I would rather go to the counter myself and bring each piece back one by one than sit in the private room waiting around while the counter guests finish three rounds before we can eat. It was pretty disappointing.

If the earlier dishes were only a little salty, from the sushi onward it was outright salty. Based on our judgment, this kind of saltiness came from the soy sauce being too salty.

What a pity, because the fish and shari were actually pretty good. Salty, salty, salty.

The eel had bones, and quite a few at that. The tamago was just rather dry, with no distinctive flavor at all.

After eating a few pieces of the cooked items, the kid fell asleep.

This should be the most disappointing restaurant among all the places we’ve eaten at with ratings above 3.7. I’m not sure if it was because we sat in a private room instead of at the counter. In the end, a waitress came over to ask for our feedback. Since I figured we probably wouldn’t come back to this restaurant anyway, I gave her a tactful version of our thoughts. She looked a bit speechless and said, thanks for being honest.

This restaurant was also within walking distance of the hotel, so we strolled back after the meal to help digest.

Some of the signs along the way had a pretty Osaka feel to them.

The little raccoon at Tanukikoji 5-chome was pretty cute too.

This Hokkaido-limited corn tea was pretty unique and really tasty, but it wasn’t easy to buy. During our time in Hokkaido, we only saw it a few times.

Lastly, a quick review of Otaru: without any Love Letter nostalgia filter, here are the impressions of a completely unromantic, quick-look tourist.

Otaru’s main street is basically a shopping street selling handicrafts and Hokkaido specialty sweets. The handicrafts are similar to Hakodate’s in that they’re highly non-uniform, and each shop sells different things. But perhaps because we had already walked around the Red Brick Warehouse area in Hakodate, Otaru felt somewhat similar in form, so we did get a bit of aesthetic fatigue.

The Blue Cave was not bad; if you’ve never been to a cave attraction like this, it’s worth a visit. But if you’re asking whether it was especially stunning, then no, not really.

If we’re talking about being laid-back, Otaru can’t compare with Hakodate, since there are far more tourists. If we’re talking about being lively, it’s still quite a bit behind Sapporo. For us, before developing that Love Letter sentiment, it’s probably just a city we’d visit once.

2023 Japan Trip Series

This series covers the author’s trip around Japan after returning to China and before heading back to the United States.

About the Author

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