Hakodate is one of the main cities on Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island. Looming over the town is 334m-high (1,200 feet) Mount Hakodate. The mountain's summit, reachable by aerial ropeway gondola, offers dramatic views day and night. At its base is Motomachi, a neighborhood of steep streets with Western-style, early-20th-century buildings.
This is our first visit here and it is a well worth visit. If you are at all comfortable walking about on your own, I don’t believe a tour is required. The bustling Morning Market is an easy five minutes from the ship, it closes at 2pm so be sure to visit in the morning. Why do I say this well because some tours do their itineraries in reverse order, meaning you don’t get here until the market is closed or almost closed. This market has everything on offer, from fresh fish, crab, octopus to all the cute little things one can buy in Japan. Give yourself a good hour to stroll around. There is even an area where they will give you a rod and hook and you pull out your own little squid and yes they prepare it right there for immediate consumption - yum.
From this market head into the main central core of the city to find the Red Brick Warehouse district - think circle craft market at Christmas. Many funky shops within the many historical buildings. There is also a great waterfront here and even a Starbucks.
Twelve minutes beyond here you can take the reasonably priced (18.00 cdn) gondola up to the top of the Mt. Hakodate. The walk from the Red Brick district to the tram is very picturesque with many photo opportunities. After our time at the top of the mountain we were going to take a taxi back to the Morning Market for lunch but a very nice gentleman working at the tram informed us of a bus coming in three minutes to take us there. Okay, that is awesome, thanks. About fifteen minutes later we were back at the market for a fantastic lunch before heading back to the ship. The weather was perfect with sun and about 25 Celsius with a slight breeze. Just before our departure about 100 high school students came to give us a nice send off. Lots of fun and the bonus was that today they were performing on our side of the ship, so yeah, in the comfort of our own balcony.
Pro tip. If you have an Apple phone, go to your wallet and add a transit card. In this case, Japan, Suica transit card. Load it up using Apple Pay and you good to go on all transit including trains in Japan - Tap and go. Second Pro Tip. Download and use Google Translation, using the camera just hover over the Japanese characters and like magic English appears, so awesome.
A few pics of our day, hope you enjoy…
A nice welcoming committee
Practicing English
The Morning Market
These guys were alive and moving
Catching your lunch…
The Red Brick District
Thanks for the Apple Watch transit advice M&S
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