The Fryhole

Otaru is only one hour of of Sapporo on a fairly slow-esque JR train, so it was a quick trip to make during the afternoon of the 27th.  We ate lunch as soon as we got to Otaru; stopping in at a buffet near the waterfront.  Otaru is a sea-side town, and we concentrated mostly on sea-food at the buffet… to the extent that everyone ended up eating too much; so we’ve since placed a ban on buffets for lunch.  :P  Otaru has a canal (see the picture below), and there is a thin strip of buildings between the canal and the waterfront, which is where our lunch restaurant was.

After eating we spent a few hours walking through the Otaru crafts district, just back from the waterfront.  There were a few areas of distinction — first, they take great pride in their glass-blowing in Otaru, and we stopped for a few minutes to watch a few Japanese teenagers create glasses with the help of the expert attendants… it was interesting to watch and would have been fun to try; but really where would we keep something like a glass that would not involve it being broken as we back-packed south?

Secondly, Dad made a brand-new friend.

… and I was almost successful in getting Ang eaten by a bear.

After wandering through the crafts district we headed back to our hotel to complete our check-in (they were holding our backpacks for us at the counter), and encountered a bit of stunning advice.

Yeah, that’s right… you heard the sign!  Get lubing…

After checking into the hotel we decided that we had some daylight left to burn and so we headed to Mount Tenguyama (literally means Mountain of Goblins), which is a nearby mountain that is a skihill in the winter but open for tram rides in the summer.  The tram was still running and we took it up to the top, where we found ourselves dropped off in a building containing a museum full of goblin masks.

Leaving the tram drop-off building ruled by goblins, we found ourselves with quite a sweeping view of Otaru below, nestled between the mountain and the sea.

Daylight was fading fast, though, and we had a job to do.  See, the tram ticket operator had offered us either a one-way or a round-trip pass to the tram.  I urged us to take the one-way… not sure why, entirely… but Mom and Dad had been complaining of not enough hiking, so I anticipated that we could find a hiking trail down the mountain and sate that particular desire.

So we had to find our way down the mountain.  With limited light, and it was fading… we hiked around a bit at the top on some trails that were laid out, but didn’t see anything that led downwards much… so we finally just bit the bullet and descended the ski slope.  It’s not as easy as it sounds!

It was clearly at a steep angle; and it had very treacherous footing as well… mostly because of the imperfect job of clearing it of brush that had been done.  It looked like people had gone through the entire slope with machetes, hacking everything down to a few inches (but no smaller — there was always at least an inch or two of stem remaining to trip any hiker up), and then leaving the now-detached stalk/trunk/whatever on the slope.

It really doesn’t matter for the ski-slope; I suppose that it is all covered with snow before anyone tries to ski on it at all; but for us hiking down it was… difficult.  It was slow, extremely difficult going; but eventually we made it to the halfway point.  That point is of particular importance, because it got us two things.  First, the slope lessened significantly for the second half, making it a less dangerous road to follow; and second we gained some light, thanks to the buildings that lay below us and cast their light-pollution upwards.

We sat down to rest for a few moments, and as night darkened we got a very nice nightview of Otaru.

… almost makes the painful descent worthwhile. 

After descending the rest of the way and grabbing a bus back into Otaru proper; we headed out to another waterfront establishment for a quick snack — we hadn’t eaten since lunch; but then again the lunch buffet still had most of us quite full.  We were pleasantly surprised to run across a restaurant that had live jazz entertainment, which made the light snack more enjoyable.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 27th, 2006 at 1:18 pm and is filed under Reality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.