Today started with our first traditional Japanese breakfast consisting of grilled fish, egg scrolls, pickles, natto (fermented soy beans!), pureed radish, rice and miso. Not bad at all, although the natto is definitely an acquired taste!
We took the train out to Otaru as we had heard they had a fairly picturesque town with a nice historic canal. Yes, they had a canal, but no, it wasn’t exactly picturesque (although we did check out a great fish market…not sure if that counts or not?!)!
So back to Sapporo we went, intending to wander past the Sapporo Autumn food festival that we had heard was being held this week.
The intent was to wander. We ended up staying for the rest of the afternoon! So much good food and drink on offer. I started on grilled sea urchin while Karen had a whole grilled fish (with a couple of local microbrewery beers to wash it all it down!). About five hours and six or seven more meals later we finally decided to call it quits for the day!! We only found out that the festival was on as we were about to leave Australia, and it turned out to be one of the highlights of the holiday so far. Great timing!
ps. on a sad note, as were walking to catch our train this morning we saw this old bloke tottering along the street beside us. We overtook him as we started crossing the really busy road, heard a sickening CRACK, turned back and saw that he’d collapsed about 20m behind us. Plenty of passersby rushed to assist and the last view we had was of someone giving him CPR! Really hope of all turned out for the best…