Hakodate 2

The hostel doesn't serve breakfast, but there was a better alternative anyway. Hakodate is a morning city to Sapporo's nighttime city. The fish markets near the train station and harbour open before dawn, commercial customers buy the best of catch and after 0800, tourists gawk and shop. This was one huge king crab, see the pigeon for comparison.

Lots and lots of roe too.

I don't know why these honeydew melons are so expensive. They are bigger than the ones in Australia though.

I wasn't shopping for fresh seafood, but I could eat some.  I found the hole in the wall place recommended in the guide serving miso ramen with a choice of extras. I went for the deluxe option, the miso ramen with crab legs, a prawn, a cuttlefish, and a scallop for 1150¥ (~AUD16).  I think the miso overwhelmed the delicate taste of the crab, but I really can't complain. You'd never get such a bargain in Australia.


Then I bought my rail flexipass and also booked a rental car for the last leg of the journey, around Shiretoko and Akan National Parks. Ouch, that was the fastest I've spent hundreds of dollars over a counter. Oh well, now that they're paid for, I don't have to fret about them.

While looking for an Internet cafe and failing, I came across a Pachinko parlour.  Out of curiosity I had a squiz. It was like entering an inferno with the noise level of a jet engine. There were several aisles with glassy-eyed players working the machines. So that's how bored citizens fritter away their time and money. Not much different from pokie addiction I suppose.


I wised up; I asked the tourist information counter where Internet access could be had. She indicated another tourist office at the other end of the warehouse district. Ironic that in this the most modern of nations, I could have been in a 3rd world country for the non-access in the last few days. Business hotels have it, but a lot of hostels don't use the Internet, preferring phone or fax.  They don't seem to get enough backpackers in cities to provide Internet cafes or WiFi hotspots. (Maybe it's just Hokkaido, because travellers said that hostels in Honshu had free WiFi.) I missed the Internet very much; it provides me with communication, news, reference information and much more.  I caught up with my email at the tourist office.

For lunch I decided to try the Hakodate Beer microbrewery. I had the green apple beer with some slices of prosciutto. I think they infuse the beer with apple essence. Interesting.


After lunch I went back to the hotspot, updated my blog and made some bookings. Out of the blue a charwoman offered me a chair (I was sitting on the floor to be near a power point).  Later an employee came along and said something I couldn't understand. She went back to get another colleague to help. It turned out there was no problem, they were just telling me that I could sit in the "cafe" section of the office where there were proper tables and power points. How nice of them.

In the evening, I caught the bus up Mt. Hakodate. My original idea was to catch the bus up and walk down. A look at the map showed that this was totally impractical, it was too far, and anyway it would be too dark after sunset to walk down.  I thought maybe there would be a couple of hundred people there.  I was off by an order of magnitude. It seemed as if all the tour buses in Hokkaido had converged on the mountain, so much so that traffic management had their hands full. There were tour groups, schoolchildren excursions, etc.

Every spot at the railings was two or three deep. Flashes were going off like a papparazzi orgy.  But the view was spectacular because Hakodate occupies a peninsula with sea on each side and the mountain forming the headland.