As I wrote before, Osaka is a good place for side trips. Since we've been to Kyoto and Nara many times, we decided to go to Kobe where we've never been.

We had a day to do more wandering in Osaka before heading off to Sapporo. Marie' was off to Kyoto to visit friends and we tried to figure out what we might want to see in Osaka without too much work. The couple of things that popped up were the Tsutenkaku Tower, the Osaka equivalent to Tokyo Tower, sort of, and Dotonbori, the riverside food/tourist district. Off we went...

This will be a bit different post. Because of timing and weather, the wanderings in Sapporo itself were limited. We always planned to spend a good bit of time at the Sapporo Brewery, but the weather was a disincentive for some of the places we wanted to go; Sapporo is surrounded by a lot of nature which is nice in good weather, but.