We’ve paused the Sapporo Snow Festival for a day and headed out to Otaru, a charming old port town on the Sea of Japan and, believe it or not, on the same latitude as Vladivostok, which is just 766 kilometres away.

Otaru is around 45 mins on a local train from Sapporo, and, on this particular Saturday, it was packed with day-trippers – standing room only outward bound, first through outlying areas of Sapporo, then Teine, the gateway to the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics and the powder snow ski-fields that make this one of the best skiing spots in all of Japan. And you can see why, it’s been snowing heavily all morning. 

Otaru is sandwiched between the snow-covered mountains of central Hokkaido and the natural harbour of Otaru, with distant views across the icy sea to even further flung peaks – which, I believe to be the wild northwest of the island. Hokkaido is the northernmost island of Japan, formerly known as Ezo and inhabited by the Ainu people, who have lived here with their own distinct culture since the 12^th or 13^th century, Otaru being an Ainu name meaning “river running through sandy beach”.

Although the Japanese have ruled the southern tip of the island since the 16^th century, it wasn’t until the Meiji Restoration of 1869 that the entire island was controversially annexed and colonised. Today, around 20,000 Ainu remain in Hokkaido and continue to face economic and social marginalisation (we’re led to understand), but the embracing of Ainu designs in local crafts (we bought some) seems to suggest either growing acceptance or cultural appropriation.

Today, Otaru is a bustling port town of some 143,000 souls with the port as its focus with regular ferry routes to the main island of Honshu taking some 18 hours. 

Down by the port is a canal, built in 1923 to allow smaller ships to transport goods to western-style stone warehouses. Today the canal was almost frozen over with large stalactite icicles hanging from the warehouse roofs – sudden clear blue skies belying the true nature of this freezing cold snowy day. 

Being a Saturday, Otaru was quite busy with both day-tripping locals and a fair number of foreign tourists, most notably, Chinese. But, perhaps not surprisingly, most translated signs here were in Chinese and Russian – but not a Russian tourist in sight, perhaps because it’s become increasingly difficult for a Russian tourist to travel to Japan, despite being so close. A Japanese embassy-sanctioned visa is required.

We discovered a great spot for lunch in the main shopping street (shops selling mostly locally hand-blown glass – a Murano-like Otaru specialty). All streets were completely iced over, causing no end of slips and falls, thankfully not us! We had the most delicious Wagyu Beef Katsu Meal, appropriately washed down with a nice bottle of local Sake. It was “oishi” (delicious – a good word to add to your limited vocabulary – always gets a smile).

We headed for the station – once again we practically tip toed, it was that icy, and back to Sapporo along the wild coast-hugging track with the distant snowy mountains and waves splashing on the windows. What a great day trip out of Sapporo. Back to our gorgeous Ryokan and a longed-for soak in the steaming hot onsen. Heaven. Oh, and it’s snowing again.