Round The World and other travels

A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries

This is: Japan 2014

Into position for the cruise

For the third day in a row, breakfast was at Starbucks. It seemed to be a good deal quieter than on the previous two days, perhaps due to the same end-of-week effect that causes commuter traffic at home to be so much more bearable on a Friday. After that, there was nothing else for it but to pack, check out and take the short and by now thoroughly familiar walk to the station. Any sadness on leaving was tempered by satisfaction that we'd given Kanazawa a good shot, leaving little in the way of unfinished business, and by eager anticipation for the next phase of the trip, a week-long cruise around Hokkaido. We bought tickets for the 1033 train to Toyama (allowing travel in the Green Car, naturellement. )

ABOVE: A final fling in the Green Car

Just as at Kanazawa, Toyama Station was undergoing improvement works, although these seemed to be less far advanced than in the city we'd just left. We waited for the airport bus due at 12 noon. This was basically an ordinary city bus that happened to call at the airport, but it did have 1+1 seating, so that there was lots of room for luggage alongside the seats.

Check-in was easy at this small airport. We had a quick look around and settled on a tempura-and-noodles lunch. Sadly, it didn't seem to be very fresh and proved to be our first disappointing meal since arriving in Japan - that's airport food for you! There was no lounge to relax in, so we had a brief look around the shop, went airside and waited in the gate area for our slightly delayed aircraft.

(Link to flight log in side panel)

Well, thank you - it's very nice to be here!

The train to Otaru Chikko via Sapporo was very busy indeed due to our being caught up in the Friday evening rush hour. It was held up around Sapporo and again on the final stretch to Otaru, presumably due to the recent flooding that we had seen reported on the television news. On arrival at Otaru Chikko, we were able to reach the Grand Park Hotel by walking through a large shopping mall adjacent to the station. The hotel, until recently a Hilton, had an impressive lobby that was built on a grand scale; the room, on the other hand, turned out to be somewhat plain.

After quickly settling in, we went to the bar for cocktails, which were nicely made, tasted just right and went down a treat. Dinner in the same area, on the other hand, was both expensive and disappointing. It seemed to be based on some kind of misguided fusion concept where, for example, one course was beef in a classic French red wine reduction, while another was Japanese sushi. One of the supplied accompaniments for the sushi was olive oil, which simply didn't work. On the other hand, one unexpected success was a piece of sushi featuring, bizarrely, sun-dried tomato and mozzarella.