Hakodate is probably most famous for that view. The night view from Mt. Hakodate is considered one of three "million dollar night views" in the world (the other two being in France and Hong Kong). Don't ask me where that phrase and justification comes from...I have no idea. Still, we immediately made our way to the Mt. Hakodate Ropeway to check the view out before checking into our hotel.
There were only couples (and Chinese tourists) at the ropeway station and atop Mt. Hakodate. Singles beware, that place is overflowing with neon hearts and romantic overtones. Once we were up there, we spent forever trying to take a decent picture of ourselves and failed miserably. A couple was kind enough to take a picture of us, but we didn't like it and had to wait for them to leave before we continued trying. They took forever!
Once we finally got back to the ground station, we took the bus back to Hakodate Station before we waited for another bus to take us to our hotel. Public transportation in Hakodate is not really convenient at all. The buses run infrequently, and the tram is slow with inconvenient stops. By the time we made it to our hotel, it was too late for dinner and we had to go to their dining room to order a la carte. Neither of us were that hungry anyway, so it's actually much better that we got that 6000 Yen off the bill the next day instead of stuffing ourselves with a meal we didn't really want.
Yunokawa Prince Hotel Nagisatei is one of the premier hotels at the Yunokawa Onsen, one of the most famous hot springs in Japan. The source is right next to the ocean, and our hotel was actually on the beach. You can see the hot spring water come out of the sand and flow into the sea; for some reason or another, the water is actually salty as well.
We paid a little (maybe a lot) extra to get a private rotenburo in our room! We could have gotten more use out of it, if we checked in earlier, but it was quite the luxury. It's kinda hard to take beer into the public baths, ya see. We snacked and drank while we dipped ourselves and gazed out over the winter sea. Unfortunately, this is about the only good part of Nagisatei. Overall, the baths are amazing and the water is pretty nice, but the hotel itself is huge and not in the greatest shape. In my opinion, you kind of end up overpaying for the onsen part, so I wouldn't really recommend staying there.
We woke up the next morning and first headed to Fort Goryokaku by bus. The bus dropped us off a while away from the actual Fort and we had to walk forever with all of our bags. Eventually, we finally made it to Goryokaku Tower from where we got this view.
Fort Goryokaku is the first Western style fort in Japan and the site of some historical battle or something. We were admittedly disengaged from the history of it all. Or maybe I was too busy eying the melon ice cream.
We did head down into the fort as well. I think that the entire layout of the fort was never completed due to monetary shortages, but the Magistrate's building was sitting there alive and well.
We would have paid more attention to the fort and buildings in general, if we hadn't come across creepy little Kitty-chan hanging out in a snow cave.
Kitty-chan...what are you doing there? What happened to you?
Our time was swiftly running out in Hakodate, but we still had a couple of different things we wanted to try. First up, we checked out ikameshi, a Hakodate specialty, at a small joint nearby.
Good but not great. V tells me that there are ones in Taiwan that blow this out of the water. Also it took forever since there was this giant Chinese family occupying the table behind us. Ok, so there weren't that many of them, but the grandma running the place did all the order taking and cooking herself, so that one squid took us way too long.
The Chinese family couldn't figure out the menu either, and the Japanese guys next to us had difficulty explaining the concept of squid ink pasta to them. V and I didn't really want to get involved, because once you help people out with language problems, they stick to you like leeches! Eventually, I tried to help them out in broken Chinese, while we kept V's fluency a secret. My explanation went like, "This is 'ika.' Inside 'ika,' the black stuff. That's what this is." I think they got it.
We finally ate, paid and left just in time for it to start raining. I hailed us a cab and we tailed it back to Hakodate Station. My new trick for getting cabs to hurry is to ask them what time it is and how long it takes for us to get wherever we're going. This prompts them to ask why, after which I explain that we have a train in x minutes. It works brilliantly. I used it three or four times on our trip.
Cabbie took two minutes (it felt like only two) to get all the way back to the station and dropped us off at the fish market right next to it. Luckily, we found a place at the fish market that did donburi to go, so we ordered a couple. I waited for the food to arrive, while V went to buy our train tickets and we were on the train, food in hand, with plenty of time to spare.
Ikura-kani-don and
Ikura-hotate-don. Both highly recommended. We sat down to chow down while an entire car full of people looked on in jealousy. Yeahhh, they were really damn good. We settled in to take a nice two hour nap as the Super Hakucho took us to our next stop: Aomori.
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