Kushiro sights?

[David_S29]

The Noordam is scheduled to stop in Kushiro on October 11 en route to its destination (for us) in Yokohama. I really don't want to take a tour, and would instead rather spend the day walking around and touring the port (and what we can of the city). Does anyone have any favourite spots or sights they can recommend?

[Sir PMP]

Just walk right off the ship and you'll see a food mall, nice to walk around, you can also cross the bridge and see the fishing fleet, it's just a quiet small fishing town.

[LAFFNVEGAS]

You may want to ask this question on the CC Asia board, HAL does not frequent that port often and it has only been recently HAL has been doing more Japan cruising. When I was planning my Japan cruises on Princess back in 2017 and 2019 I would frequent this Asia board. Unfortunately a large majority of the HAL cruisers have not cruised to Japan.

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/43-asia/

[David_S29]

At the recommendation of a kind poster on the HAL sub-forum, I thought I'd ask here: does anyone have any suggestions for sights to see for a day trip to Kushiro in mid-October? I'd much rather walk around and see what I can instead of being stuck on a tour bus all day.

[Taters]

We were just in Kushiro on Westerdam on April 30th.  It was pouring rain all day and I was surprised that we did not dock at the pier in town.  The city provided shuttles to downtown (about 15 minutes away) to the Moo, which is a good size fish and general market.  We walked over to the Kushiro Art Museum, and despite what their website showed, they were closed, apparently for a couple of months according to the sign in front of the building.  (We used Google Translate to read the sign.)  This is all near the regular cruise ship pier, and no ship was there that day, which made me wonder why we didn't dock there.  

 

The shuttles were a mess with very long lines.  We had friends who'd booked a tour to see the cranes and they were disappointed because they saw no cranes due to the pouring rain.  They had a good time anyway.

 

Honestly, Kushiro doesn't have much to offer cruisers.  I did a LOT of research on this port prior to the cruise.  There's not much to do about the rain, but with the art museum closed, I kind of wish we'd just stayed on board that day.  It was a really cold day and we are Alaskans.  LOL

 

[David_S29]

6 minutes ago, Taters said:

 

Honestly, Kushiro doesn't have much to offer cruisers. 

 

I live in a town of 7000 in the middle of the boreal forest, so I'm sure that Kushiro will seem like chaotic fun after that, or at least offer more than a stroll to the local Co-op and Canadian Tire (today's big outing). 

 

Thanks to all for sharing your experiences! 

[Host Kat]

2 hours ago, David_S29 said:

At the recommendation of a kind poster on the HAL sub-forum, I thought I'd ask here: does anyone have any suggestions for sights to see for a day trip to Kushiro in mid-October? I'd much rather walk around and see what I can instead of being stuck on a tour bus all day.

 

Hello @David_S29

 

Your two threads have been merged into one. That way all the replies will be in one place.

 

Happy sails,

 

Host Kat

[bkennedytx1]

We are on the HAL cruise stopping in Kushiro also.  There is not much offered by HAL and both tours got pretty bad reviews.  I think we are just going to go ashore on our own and take a taxi to the Crane reserve or get on public transport and look around.  I will continue to watch and see if anything new tour wise pops up going forward.