20 kilometers

Today was the day of visiting the old city center of Hakodate and the nearby Mt. Hakodate, the namesake of the city. The friendly lady from the Inn gave me some good tips on shrines to visit and advised me to go to the tourist information center for a map of Hakodate in English and some more tips on things to visit, which i did. There are several people at the station wearing blue jackets with buttons that said Tourist Information and English speaker. I adressed a really friendly lady who gave me some great tips on things to visit in the old city center, like the old foreign merchant houses. Hakodate was one of the first cities to be opened to foreign traders after a period of seclusion that lasted more than 200 year and where only the Dutch had a small trading post in Nagasaki. The weather was really nice and so i decided to just walk around and just enjoy the scenery. I found 3 different churches in a small area which is no surprise with all the foreign traders from Russia, the US and France amongst others. The place was filled with schoolkids who were obviously enjoying the warm weather and possibly the fact that they didn't have to be at school that day. I continued walking south to Hakodate park for a brief nap and after that went looking for the Hakodate shrine to get some new seals in my book. It wasn't really hard to find because it had a huge orange Torii gate in front of it. After getting the seal i strolled around the area a bit and decided it was about time for lunch. I noticed on the way that there were some old red brick warehouses that were converted to a shopping and dining district and that it had a nice little ramen noodle shop. I got me a big bowl of noodles and slurped my way through until the bowl was empty and i was full.
I had heard many good things about the night view of Hakodate from the top of the mountain and thought it would be a good thing to get there a bit early to make sure i had a good spot for taking pictures. These things can get kinda crowded. I took the cablecar to the summit and after taking some daytime pictures i got me a good window seat at the bar in the summit station. I ordererd a beer to kill the time and was joined by a family from Thailand. I had a great talk with the mother and son about vacations and Europe and whatnot. After saying goodbye i went back outside to get some nighttime pictures of Hakodate. It was really beautiful but also really crowded. I decided to head back down to the city and go back to the hostel to get a good nights sleep.Read more