Category: Japan

There’s a place very close to my hotel called ‘The Morning Market’ and it’s a city block with dozens of shops selling fresh seafood. Most of them have tanks full of live animals that you can buy and have cooked (or served raw) right on the spot. It’s a bit overwhelming to be honest ; I’ve never seen so many live crabs!

Hakodate is a squid-eaters paradise, and you can fish one up yourself at any one of a dozen or more places, and they’ll prep it for you right in front of you. Grilled or raw: your choice!

The squid’s are cute, and I’ll be honest I found the entire spectacle a little sad. But I say this on the same day I ate beef and chicken so who am I to judge?

Afterwards I walked about a half hour south to Mount Hakodate at the end of the city. A ropeway took me to the top where the views were astounding.

Apparently this is one of the best views in Japan, and even better at night. I very much doubt I’ll see the night view (I turn into a pumpkin early these days) but I was more than happy with the day version!

You can see the entire city, with the beach on the east and the bay on the west. These photos hardly convey how good visibility was, and certainly don’t reveal how hot it was on top!

Indeed, I had a coat in my backpack because I had read it can be chilly at the top but it was quite a bit warmer and humid than at the bottom, and even 30 seconds outdoors on the viewing platform was enough to get the sweat running!

There were a few restaurants and souvenir shops at the top (and a working radio station) and I also saw this little diorama box. I’ve seen a few others like this during this trip, and they’re usually placed near gacha machines. The idea is to buy a gacha that is some sort of figure, then you can take a photo of them in the diorama for social media. This one specifically says to put stuffed animals in, but I watched two girls take photos of Demon Slayer characters they had just pulled from a gacha. Maybe I should use one of these?

I had originally decided to do the mountain today and Goryokaku tomorrow but rain is forecast so I moved the park forward. It was too far to work in todays heat (it reached 29C/84F with 90% humidity) so I hopped on a city tram. There’s only one route and it’s a bit slow, but in the absence of a subway it’s a handy way to get between tourist spots.

Shortly after getting off the tram I reached my second destination: Goryokaku Tower. There wasn’t much of a wait before I was on the observation level and took this photo:

That is Goryokaku Park, a star-shaped fort built about 150 years ago that is now a public park. Once again the view was better in person than in the photo, and it’s remarkable to appreciate how scenic this fort is when that was hardly a motive for its construction!

That’s the view from the same tower in the southern direction, showing the mountain with the observatory that I had up earlier in the day. As you can see Hakodate is very flat, and the views of the city from both the mountain and the tower were great.

The tower had a small glass floor section, and the vast majority of visitors did their best to not step on it! I like these, and would like an observation towers where all the walls and floor were transparent!

The day was still young when I descended the tower and headed into the park, and I had an open afternoon. I perhaps foolishly decided I’d walk to a bookstore I had heard was good (it was!) but this ended up being too much walking for such a very hot and humid day, and afterwards I was more ruined than any point so far on this trip. Luckily I found a taxi and was able to revitalize in the hotel onsen before my hit points reached -10.

Speaking of the hotel baths, they’re great. Not only is there a hot bath, but also a cold one and a sauna. The sauna is so hot I’d probably pass out if I went in, and the cold bath is so cold I’d get hypothermia so I’m settling for boiling myself in the hot bath. It’s not as fancy as Ichinobo, but I’m an unsophisticated onsen fan and I’m happy. (Image from the hotel website.)

As I said it will probably rain tomorrow, so I’m happy I got these two viewing platforms out of the way. There’s other historic things to see, and even if the rain becomes heavy I’ve got a few others activities in mind for tomorrow as well…

Early start today. I had to get back to Sendai (which took about 40 minutes on a train so packed with people I thought I was back on the Tokyo subway) so I could catch this:

That’s another Hayabusa (‘peregrine falcon’) bullet train. It’s a different colour (Miku green!) and has a longer nose than the one I caught the other day, which I assume meant it would be faster 🙂

For the last decade or so (including last week when I rode to Sendai), I’ve always bought seats in the ‘Green Car’, which is a confort level above normal. Given that normal train seats in Japan are better than in other countries, Green Car seats have always been exceptional.

But today – for the first time ever – I rode ‘Gran Class’, which is the highest level of seating. The above is a photo taken by the car attendant of me sitting in the most comfortable seat I have ever sat in while cruising along at over 200 miles an hour. And I’m not talking just about train seats: this was the seat of a king!

I ate my tiny pork cutlet sandwich and enjoyed the 2.5 hours from Sendai to Hakodate with a never-fading goofy smile on my face. I’ve got lots more to say about Gran Class but it’ll wait a few days, since I’m riding it again back to Tokyo, and that trip is about 4 hours.

As mentioned, I’m now in Hakodate, a city on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. I’ve got a lazy three nights here, and it promises to be relaxing and fun since while this isn’t the most active tourist city in Japan I’m sure it has history and sights for me to discover.

They certainly like their squid here! That’s one on the postbox (which is just outside my hotel so your postcards will be mailed in this one), the souvenirs are squid-obsessed and I even saw a few live squid’s swimming in a tank in a shop. But I’ll defer more squid talk until tomorrow, since I think it may be a bit of a squid overdose where I’ll be going.

The city is nestled on a promontory with ocean on each side and is known for fishing. I’ve never seen such a concentration of seafood restaurants as around the station, and many (most?) keep their menu items swimming in tanks rather than stored in fridges. Again, I think I’ll see a lot more of this tomorrow…

I wanted to see the beach so I walked there (about an hour round trip) and I was surprised to find it almost deserted. It’s very long and the sand is gray and coarse, but it seems swimmable and I don’t know why no-one was splashing around. It’s even the ‘recommended’ beach to swim at!

I passed this statue in a park on my back. He’s Gekko Kamen, the first TV superhero. All the way back in 1958 he debuted, even before most Japanese had TV sets. I read it wasn’t uncommon for TV stores to let kids watch him on their sets after they were closed, which is cute and I’m sure helped sell TVs. The creator lived in Hakodate, hence the statue.

After a healthy lunch (did you like the photo in post #2500?) I was tired and realized I’d got a bit sunburned! I even packed some warm clothes since I’d read even in summer it can be chilly here, but I doubt I’ll be wearing them. Tomorrow will be even hotter so it’s a good thing I brought sunscreen.

My room is tiny even by Japanese hotel standards, but it’s clean and modern, and the hotel has lots of amenities including laundry and even an onsen! Yes I’ll be soaking in baths here as well starting first thing tomorrow morning. I’m sure it won’t have a patch on the baths at Ichinobo, but I’ll let you know.

That’s my room view. Pretty isn’t it? I should have some even better views tomorrow…

I slept in this morning – probably the first time this entire trip – and thus missed this hot air balloon being set up on an island just beyond the hotel. I watched them rise slowly to about two balloon-heights in the air and float at that height for about an hour or so before slowly returning to the ground.

Breakfast was frightening. So many unusual items, with unusual tastes (for me). I usually like Japanese omelets but this one tasted strongly of fish, and the scrambled eggs on toast was full of mayonnaise. I ate a croissant and ran away.

The hotel seems popular based on the number of people using the baths! Neither my Kinugawa or our Fuji onsen were anywhere near as busy, and in five soaks (so far) I was alone alone once and that was for about a minute. The baths are truly wonderful, and I could soak in them every day 🙂

I found the train ride to Ishinomaki very scenic, since I like how Japan mixes rice fields with suburbia. In a few cases there was ocean (or at least the bay) on one side of the train, and rice fields on the other. I saw more than one house completed surrounded by rice fields, in some cases very large ones. I wonder what it is like living on a small island of land amidst all that rice?

A few times I saw big bales of white things being stored along the road. I wondered what they were but then when we stopped at a station there were a bunch alongside the track and I noticed they were oyster shells! I imagine these will be used for fertilizer or similar, but it’s incredible seeing how many there were no (and this photo is only a small portion of them).

I walked through town a bit when I returned from Ishinomaki and this photo shows cooked seafood being sold right off the grill. They had oysters, squid, scallops and whelks, and notably no fish. There are a lot of stands like this, and they seem very popular with the Japanese tourists. I was surprised to see young people and even children eating oysters, since I’ve always associated them with an old man’s food 🙂

Dinner was the same menu as last night, and I braved the beef tongue this time. It tasted good – just like steak – but the texture was not for me, and I barely ate it. I also discovered that what I thought was apple juice may have actually been some sort of alcoholic dragonfruit beverage, and I’d already drunk a glass before I realized that!

They’ve lit some fires overlooking the pond tonight, and when I went for a walk in the garden at sunset I could hear a large flock of seabirds somewhere not far away. This has been a well-needed relaxing day, and I’ve recharged myself a bit and am ready to travel further north tomorrow. In style.

You’ll see what I mean in tomorrows post 😉