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Best way to tour around Otaru 2015/12/8 19:50
Hello :)
I'm planning to tour around Otaru, but I will only reach at about 12:00pm. Since I won't have much time much time left to tour around, what will be the recommended route if I were to take the Otaru Stroller Bus? (I will be staying at Grand Park Otaru Hotel)

And what are the operating hours of the Otaru Stroller Bus?
by Jello (guest)  

Re: Best way to tour around Otaru 2015/12/9 06:34
Otaru is pretty small - when I visited we walked and it didn't take too long - maybe we missed something.

The most interesting part of the visit was watching the riot police training session. The canal and tourist shop area were not so great, but it depends what you want to see.
by JapanCustomTours rate this post as useful

Re: Best way to tour around Otaru 2015/12/9 14:25
The Grand Park Otaru is outside the main area of sights of the city as it's down in the port area with the nearest JR station being "Otaru Chikko," 2 stations from Otaru Station. Using a bus would save time if you didn't have to wait too long.

Otaru downtown map:
http://www.city.otaru.lg.jp/sisei_tokei/otaru/foreigner/otaru-map.data...

Otaru Area map and sights:
http://www.city.otaru.lg.jp/sisei_tokei/otaru/foreigner/otaru-map.data...
Your hotel is between the Ishihara Yujiro Museum and the Otaru Chikko Station.

You can walk around the downtown area, but from your hotel it would be a longer walk. I would check with the front desk about the Stroller bus as there are several routes and schedules that vary by season, but in general the last buses stop around 5-6 PM. You might just take city buses to get to a place of interest to start walking.

The only bus that I've taken regularly is from Otaru Station to Shukutsu, as I use Otaru as an example of economic "situational changes" in the course of a city's evolution. Otaru started as a coal mining and herring fishing town followed by an ecological disaster due to overfishing of the herring which led to the eco-system collapsing, the fish disappearing, the money disappearing and a long period of stagnation and bank closings until they filled in half the canal and put in the walkway, cast iron light posts, and turned the fish warehouses into pubs to revitalize the economy.

Shukutsu has the old Aomori Mansion to illustrate how much money there was back in 1920 from the herring industry and has the "Herring Museum" (Nishin Goten Museum) up on the hill below the lighthouse where you can see photos of the piles of herring that once were. You can also get there by taking a sight-seeing boat out of the port near the city museum. I've often thought about staying at the hotel above the aquarium in Shukutsu, but it's above my usual budget.

Otherwise, the walk from Otaru station down to the canal to the city museum and then along the canal and further past the old closed banks and other historic buildings marked with signs down to the Music Box Museum with its steam clock takes an hour or 2. Unless you're going to some outside-the-downtown-area sights, you might just want to take a taxi to the city museum, and armed with a map, walk back to your hotel stopping in places that look interesting along the way.
by Anaguma (guest) rate this post as useful

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