Hakodate-hantō

Well folks we have finally made it to Hokkaido. We caught the Shinkansen from Aomori to Hakodate this morning. This part of the Shinkansen system only opened on the 26 of March this year and involves a 53km trip in the Seikan Tunnel, 20 odd km of which is under the seabed. The trip was uneventful, everything looked brand new and worked flawlessly. The Shinkansen station is a bit out of town but the Hakodate liner synchronises with the Shinkansen arrival and we arrived in Hakodate a bit after the 1100hr. Since then we have checked out Goryōkaku fort and the Hakodate trams - not a pinch on Melbourne's system but don't tell the locals! We ended the day on the top of Mount Hakodate where we had dinner and took in the bright lights along with a couple of thousand other tourists!Read more