Sunny in Hakodate

Kim managed to sleep almost twelve hours to 5:30 am. After a light breakfast of toast and boiled eggs, we went to the Morning Market. It had lots of seafood, king crab and fresh fruit. I had a super persimmon! We found the cuttlefish fishing area and Kim caught a cuttlefish with great skill 🙂 I ate it! Writhing tentacles were tasty with soya sauce! We then headed to the ship museum – Mashu Maru- which was a retired Japan railway company ferry which ran from 1965-1988. It was neat to see the different classes for the then 3.5 hour trip to the north island (it took us less than 20 through the underwater tunnel. It was a beautiful sunny day. We walked up to an old British consulate with amazing architecture. We had tea in the beautiful tearoom and enjoyed the mom-break from walking. Then we went up the hill to an old public hall which was used as a marine law enforcement court. It had been beautifully restored and part of it is used 30 times a year as a concert hall. The Emperor and Empress also rested there somewhat recently. Next up was going to the Ropeway to get to the top of Mt. Hakodate. It wasn’t quite noon yet 🕚 We found a Russian Orthodox church on the way. The interior was magnificent and it was built to withstand fire – very important as everything seems to burn in Japan! We found the rope way was closed for maintenance for 1 month and the bus only ran from there from 4 to 9 pm. We walked back down the steep hill and stopped at a temple along the way. Turns out they were having some sort of ceremony for kids (maybe 5 year olds?) so we awkwardly left. We kept walking down the hill towards the hotel for something to eat. Found a small place where I had ramen and Jennifer omerice. We were suspicious they over charged us $3 based on the prices on the wall. Still only $13 for lunch so not a big deal. 

After lunch was crash nap time. Two hours later we went to the train station to get train tickets and a bus pass to go up Mt. Hakodate. The optimum time was to see the top around sunset so we were nice and early for that as we left the station around 4 for the scenic 30 min ride to the top. The peak is at 340 metres and there is a 270 degree view at the top being that it is the tallest peak in the vicinity. On the way we picked up many people to the point where I do not think we could squeeze another person in. When we hit the top there were over 15 charter buses that we could see. The building up top for the ropeway was massive with many viewing platforms which meant you could find somewhere to look over the city once the hoards of people left the stairs. Around 5:00 the number of people peaked and then it was easier to find a place to enjoy the view. The bus line to go back down was daunting at about 50 metres but we only had to wait about 25 minutes. 
We stopped 2 stops before the bus station beside the brick buildings to hunt for dinner and we found a reasonably sized sushi train restaurant. It was neat in that there was an bilingual iPad menu where you could order your drink, appetizers like fries, battered shrimp, squid or other things, and then you could order freshly made things or at least you would know what you were eating. You could also grab whatever you wanted from the conveyer belt ranging from sushi cooked or not, desserts such as pudding, fresh yubari melon which is similar to cantaloupe, some fried food or something you could not identify. We tried many things! After filling ourselves complete with local beer and dessert we paid our $70 bill. After some more shopping we headed back to our Japanese room. We also found that there were a lot of foreigners in Hakodate. Hard to tell with some until they did not speak Japanese! And it seems that the further North you go, the less English is spoken. Brain taxing 🤓

 

Kaiden sushi restaurant

Overlooking Hakodate

Fall ivy

Cuttlefish fishing!

Mashu Maru ferry captain