Maria Safont-Tria

After a nice warm onsen to wake up I rode on a grey rainy day towards Hakodate, my last stop in Hokkaido. I stopped in the famous pentagonal park Goryokaku and cycled to my couchsurfing, Yumi. After a desperately needed shower we went to do some groceries (an interesting fact about some supermarkets here is that they work as self service, which means that you scan the products and put them on your trolley and then pay for it at the end, crazy the amount of trust there is in this country and how it actually works!), and they cooked some miso ramen for dinner. My experience with couchsurfing has always been a bit weird, I have normally stayed with people with a bit awkward dynamics but I am eager to give in another chance here in Japan. In this case, it was slightly weird as well. Yumi could speak some english but her husband didn't speak a word and they had a friend that looked scary (he had one tooth left) that was always around and wouldn't even look at me, she would also interact a lot more with him than with her husband, who she treated a bit like a dog. I am also not sure if she had a lot of interest in me and it didn't feel organic. Nevertheless, it was great to have some comfort for some days and mostly to see Japanese culture a bit from the inside, which I did, and everyone was very kind. The second day I went with them to a female sumo tournament in Fukushima, a beautiful rural town and had lunch at her friend's parents place, they were actually very interested in me which was cool and they lived in a very traditional house. Watching sumo for the first time was really cool, the fights are super short and they feel really relaxed and not angry like other martial arts I have seen. An interesting thing I realised is that your opponent was chosen randomly, which meant that it wasn't separated by weights (so some fights were like a joke as you can imagine). I also tried Sakura Ice Cream which you can only have for two weeks a year in the west of Hokkaido (cherry blossom ice cream) and it was delicious! We had some burgers for dinner from a famous place and had an early night. I woke up early the next day and continued my way, I went to cycle around Hakodate to see the city, it was the first port in Japan to open to international trading so the architecture is very different, unique and elegant. Had some mackerel in the morning market (the traditional japanese breakfast is normally grilled fish with rice and some pickled vegetables) and made my way to the ferry station, where I met another bike packer! Excited to look at someones bike and see what they are doing on their trip (which went both ways). His set up was a lot lighter, which made me decide to leave my winter clothes in the next town (hopefully leaving the cold weather behind in Hokkaido), because I am planning to bike Northern Honshu from the centre, which means a lot of mountains and hills, so any extra weight will be strongly felt!

🏯 To do: Motomachi area, Goryokaku Park, the views from Mount Hakodate at night were elected as top 3 views in Japan a few years ago but I didn't get to see it because I am not the biggest fan of night city views so it wasn't worth the hassle, take the ferry back to the mainland
🥢 Eat: Lucky Pierrot (burger place with japanese twist)Læs mere