Candles and ice

Heidi and I took a trip to Otaru, a city in Hokkaido with a beautiful winter candlelight festival every year. Cold and beautiful! Otaru is situated on the sea, so it gets lots of snow. It's also considered to be one of Japan's most beautiful cities, and the Japanese film "Love Letter" (an old popular favorite) was filmed there.

The canal runs right through the center of town and is a site for photographers and visiters. The cold was palpable; the icy wind off the sea made our noses and hands (even through gloves) sting.



Heidi and I walked up a side street to take a photo of the gate to the canal (below), and we passed a beautiful old building with a strange, rustic charm I had never seen before. As I was standing outside in the snow-filled street wondering what kind of building it was, a white man in a funny hat came out and spoke in a language I had never heard. I was so taken aback I just stared, and he smiled and repeated his sentence (showing a gold tooth). At about that moment I realized the building was a pub, and the man was probably one of the Russian sailors that frequent the area. They're known for drunken carousing and have caused foreigners to be banned from certain places (according to the reports). Needless to say, Heidi and I hastened up the street and back to the canal walk full of people!


We walked through the town and found beautiful fresh crabs for sale along the street. Hokkaido is famous for a famous kind of hairy crab (kegani) that has tender, succulent meat and is supposedly not found anywhere else.


This is an old-style street lantern you see on shops advertising ramen (noodle soup)shops, pubs, or other restaurant-like establishments.




At night the canal glitters with hundreds upon hundreds of ice and snow candles! The candles are shaped from water or snow in molds and then left out to freeze. Then the mold is cut away, leaving a perfect cylinder with a hollow for a candle. The candles are placed inside and sparkle on the ice as they burn, shimmering all along the side of the canal and reflecting into the water. The sight of so many candles and water was just breathtaking - and extremely cold! I thought I would freeze right there on the spot. After we had taken all the cold we could, Heidi and I made our way back to the train station and took a train (packed with other Sapporo travelers) back home.