Vancouver

Day 21 (24 Sep) — Shopping (1)

The next day it was raining from the morning. Happily we had more money left over than we could spend, so breakfast was a luxurious Starbucks!

First, straight to Granville Island to enjoy some shopping. You can see the downtown skyline of towering high-rises too.

Bought earrings, a knit hat and a hoodie ♪

Tonight was nostalgic Japanese food: sushi! A place called Tsunami Sushi on Robson Street downtown doesn't stand out much, but perhaps it's well known, as it was busy with lots of people. Unlike Japanese conveyor-belt sushi, the sushi floats past on little boats. Sushi made with fresh tuna, squid, scallop and so on was as good as anything in Japan. The raw oysters especially were superb, dressed with a vinegar that suited them well. But it wasn't as reasonable as 100-yen sushi in Japan; the bill came to about 6,000 yen for two... We had no intention of changing our Canadian dollars back into yen, so fine, but back in Japan we probably won't be this extravagant for a long while.

The extravagance didn't stop (lol). Dessert to finish at a gelato shop listed in our guidebook.

From downtown Vancouver you can clearly see Cypress Mountain, a venue of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. At night the lights halfway up the mountain stand out. We thought if we went up there we'd see a really beautiful night view, so we drove. Crossing the Lions Gate Bridge and climbing the mountain, there was a viewpoint with a few cars parked, and from there we could enjoy an astonishingly beautiful night view of Vancouver. There were a few other couples, and now and then we heard Japanese. Glancing over, it seemed to be a couple of a Canadian man and a Japanese woman. Surely he was a boyfriend she met while studying abroad, who had brought her in his car. She was being wooed in sweet English...