29th December 2012 - Hakodate 函館
Met with my friends and went to the famous morning market in Hakodate. There are many shops selling seafood! Just looking at all those seafood made me hungry.
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① A 4.68kg crab
② a whale meat shop
③ fish for a squid
④ squid statue!! |
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interesting, I wondered who translated the <这条鱼有味，不要尝味道>, it doesn't make sense, if from the literal meaning, it is "this fish is flavourful, don't taste it"!
Since my friends haven't had their breakfast, we went to a restaurant near the train station. There are a lot of delicious looking raw fish rice set. One ordered a set with squid (still alive)! The tentacles were moving! After he ate that, he said that he felt that the squid was trying to climb out from the throat, gross!
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| eating not dead squid! |
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| Very delicious sashimi don 刺身丼 |
Then, we went to the Seikan Ferry Memorial Ship "Mashu-maru". The ship was used for Hakodate ⇔ Aomori line. Now, it is opened for visit. There are old ship equipments and etc. Since visitors were allowed to play with most of the equipments, we tried to touch here and there and had a really good time there.
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| Mashu-maru |
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| interior of the Mashu-maru |
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| ship equipments (olden days) |
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| nice exhibition |
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| communication equipments on the ship |
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| the map of Hokkaido, morse code test and rope art |
Then, we walked to the Hakodate Kanemori Red Brick Warehouse 金森赤レンガ倉庫. It was the first commercial warehouse in Hakodate built with red bricks, as the name suggests. The view is nice and the night view even better. Most of the post cards for Hakodate use Kanemori Warehouse as the main theme. There are restaurants and gift shops inside the warehouse. We found a nice restaurant, Small Wonder (Petite Merveille) that offered really delicious cheese cake, the staffs will offer free sampling to passers-by, we tried and fall in love with the cheese cake, so we actually had afternoon tea there, drinking coffee and eating the cheese cake. Too bad that the cake is only sold in Hakodate, they don't even sell it in Sapporo Airport, a big let down! The staff told us that they will have a trade show in Singapore because they thought we were Singaporeans. We told them we were working in Japan!
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| pass by this when walking to Kanomori warehouse |
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| Kanemori Warehouse |
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| Small Wonder Cheese cake (Heaven!) |
Then, we took tram and went to the Goryokaku park. There was a ramen shop besides the Goryokaku Tower, we had salt ramen 塩ラメン (one of the speciality in Hokkaido) there. I felt that it tasted like mee soup in Malaysia.
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| Salt ramen 塩ラメン |
Then, before the day turned dark, we went to the Goryokaku tower, we wanted to see the day and night view of the Goryokaku Fort. From the tower's observatory, one could see the Fort Goryokaku, a huge star shaped fort. It was very beautiful. Another thing I observed was that the spacing of the cars on the road were very consistent. They didn't drive near to each other for safety. Snowy road is difficult to drive on.
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| Goryokaku Park |
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| View from Goryokaku Tower |
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| View from Goryokaku Tower |
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| View from Goryokaku Tower |
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| comics on the history of the Goryokaku Fort |
After the Goryoku Park, we went to the Mt. Hakodate to see the night view of Hakodate. It is reputed to be one of the top three night views in the world. However, it was too cold for me to enjoy the view, I just snapped a few photos and left to a warmer place.
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| Mt. Hakodate night view |
Then, dinner time. We went to a local burger chain restaurant to eat burger. The shop was Lucky Pierrot and only available in Hakodate. We went to the Lucky Pierrot twice and both have different interior designs, kinda special, unlike the KFC, McDonald with identical designs for every stores. The burgers were nice too! I had a chicken burger with french fries and tea.
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| Lucky Pierrot |
Then, went to the convenience store to buy mineral water before heading back to hotel. The bottled water from the hotel's vending machine is more expensive than the convenience store. We saw some local Hokkaido alcohol and my friends bought some, just for tasting. However, according to them, it doesn't taste well.
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| Local Hokkaido alcohol drinks |
Then, really called it a night.
30th December 2012 - Hakodate 函館
Woke up late and had sashimi don 刺身丼 as brunch in the restaurant near the Hakodate Station. I love seafood! (^0_0^)
Then, we still had a lot of time left. So, we visited Hakodate-city Museum of Northern Peoples. A place that we normally won't go. There, we bought a set of discount ticket to enter this museum, The Old British Consulate and The Old Public Hall of Hakodate Ward. Well, the most interesting part of the museum was the paper cutting activity. If anyone is interested with that activity, just have to inform the receptionist there and he/she will arrange everything.
The PIC will prepare the scissors and paper. Then, draw the pattern of the desired design on the coloured paper. Then, just start cutting. It was fun! One of my friends (a teacher) joked that he can just use this paper cutting activity as one of his classroom activity.
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| paper cutting in Hakodate City Museum of Northern People |
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| Motomachi 元町 |
Then, we walked to the old British Consulate. The museum and the old consulate are in the Motomachi area, all accessible by walking. However, the road was very slippery, not easy to walk. The old British Consulate is famous for the rose garden, but the time was winter, so only a blanket of snow covering the area. I think that there is nothing special with the consulate, just around the same with the buildings in Kobe, nothing special.
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| the old British Consulate |
Then, the next destination was the Old Public Hall of Hakodate Ward, a very famous spot in Hakodate. We had to change to the provided slippers to enter the building. Quite troublesome because I wore boots and the floor was very cold.
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| The Old Public Hall of Hakodate Ward |
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| The Old Public Hall of Hakodate Ward |
Then, we continued our journey. Churches time. In the Motomachi area, there are a few churches. So, we walked around there and snapped photos. The road there was very steep.
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| Russian Orthodox Church |
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| Motomachi Roman Catholic Church |
Even if we walked really slow, we finished visiting all the places of interest. Still a lot of time left. So, we went to the Lucky Pierrot to eat burger one more time and stayed for a very long time. Then, we walked back to hotel to take luggage and went to Hakodate Station to take express train to Sapporo. The ticket was so expensive. Since this was peak season, we couldn't buy the discount ticket! The distance was quite long too, we were worried that we might not get a seat if we buy free seat ticket, so we added another 700 yen to buy designated seat ticket. Reached Sapporo quite late and went to Izakaya near the Sapporo Station to eat dinner. One of the speciality of that restaurant was seaweed salad, really nice!
Then, we checked into Hotel Northgate Sapporo, we stayed there for five nights. This hotel is quite new, only started opening on June 2012.
Day 1 & 2:
Hakodate
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