I know it's weird to post a picture of a toilet but this has to go down in the blog book. The toilet at their house has a built in sink. It turns on when you flush. The toilets there are so high tech with seat heaters, bidet, water sounds, etc.
Sayu cooked us delicious meals. Saturday morning we had a type of breakfast burrito with scrambled eggs.
They have a cute little car which is how most of the cars are in Japan, so compact. There was a TV that was on most of the time with regular Japanese TV shows playing. I don't know how that isn't too distracting for drivers there. So funny to drive around and watch TV.
They are the sweetest hosts and let us stay in their room. They also hosted a Japanese man who recently served a mission in Sappro. They let him have the other room and they stayed on mats in the family room.
We went to Otaru. It was so cloudy but thankfully the clouds parted long enough to get a picture.
There was a fenced off area where you could feed chipmunks.
This was the visitor's center and restaurant at Mt. Tengu.
The next room told about Tengu which is who all of these mask represent. You rub his nose for good luck.
We drove up Mt. Tengu but you can also take a tram.
We went down the mountain to a fountain in the city of Otaru and Tsutomu showed us tiles around the fountain that he made.
This is a sign you don't see every day, "Be careful of Tsunami."
This building was across the street from the fountain. I thought the architecture was cool.
Then we drove up a different mountain to get another view. There were some carnival rides on the way up.
Thankfully the clouds didn't block our view of the coast up here.
This is a hotel that has a very unique shape to it.
We ate lunch at a restaurant that served udon noodles.
It was so interesting to see them cook the noodles right there in the open. They had a good system depending on if you wanted your noodles hot or cold, and with or without broth.
I loved this meal. I enjoyed all of the food on my plate and didn't have to go out of my comfort zone and eat something crazy. My chopstick skills weren't too bad either.
We went shopping for souvenirs that afternoon. This store was all about ninjas.
Next to the souvenir shops was a factory where they make fish cakes. They are famous and a must eat if you go to Otaru. They fry them in a batter. They were very different tasting but I enjoyed trying them. The thing that was so awesome about the Takahashi's is that they had us try the best of each food while we were there. If we told them we wanted ice cream then they took us to the best creamery. We told them we wanted cream puffs and we went to a bakery with the best cream puffs. They truly gave us the best experience you could have visiting Sapporo.
That night we went shopping at the mall. It looked like an American mall but the stores were different. In Japan anything goes. There is no "in style" because everything is "in style."
I wish I knew the name of the restaurant we ate at for dinner. It was so awesome! The atmosphere was so great. It had brick walls and you felt like you were in an old building. The Takahashi's cooked for us since we didn't really know what we were doing. The food was amazing!
