Exploring the streets of Hakodate, Japan in winter ❄️

Here’s my look at the streets and neighborhoods of Hakodate, Japan in winter. One dark evening, and then the next day, I walked the icy sidewalks, then took streetcars, around to see what Hokkaido’s third-biggest city is like in the middle of winter. Answer: cold but vibrant. And there’s a phenomenally great way to stay warm built right into one of the street corners. Bliss.

🚠 NOTE: I keep saying “cable car” in this video; it should be “ropeway”. Oops.

0:00 Intro
0:52 Canceled ropeway
2:33 Hakodate history
7:42 Famous fire hydrant
9:29 Snowy park and shrine
10:39 Nightlife and stores
17:29 Morning
19:09 Hakodate tram
22:05 Free footbath
24:46 Outskirts of Hakodate
28:38 Thanks for watching

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Music provided by mellowstu / Pond5

Good evening. I am in Hakodate, Japan, way up north on Hokkaido. It’s snowing tonight, a very light snow. I have just left my hotel here at Hotel Resol,  and I had a whole thing planned for tonight. Today, I’m in the northern  Japanese city of Hakodate. “People!” I’ll be walking around the streets to explore  the town first at night and then during the day. After dinner, I’ll leave my hotel and wander  around to see who is out and about in the frigid  

Air, talk about the colorful history of Hakodate,  and learn how to negotiate the icy sidewalks. “I’m not a snow and ice guy.” And then, in the daylight, I’ll explore  the city’s streetcar system and admire   the colorful and vibrant buildings as I  hunt for a legendary healing footbath in  

A city said to have one of the three  most beautiful views in the world. [Music ends] There’s one thing to do when you come to  Hakodate, one famous thing that everybody   needs to do, and that is to go up and see  the view of the city from Mount Hakodate.

You go up by cable car and you look at the top;   you look down on the city which – the people  that live here and other people say it’s one   of the top three beautiful city views in  the world along with Naples and Hong Kong. Hakodate is supposed to be amazingly beautiful.

I’ve already seen the famous picture of it from   that angle a few times since I arrived  a couple of hours ago here in town. It’s on posters and in the  train stations and everything. It’s a famous view. And in my hotel. Anyway, the cable car tonight is  canceled because of high winds.

It’s not windy here in the  city, but unfortunately,   apparently it’s too windy for the cable car  so I can’t go up and see the view tonight. But I think we need to look  at this in the optimist’s way.

So, we can’t see the big sweeping view of  Hakodate all at once, but we can be down here   on the streets getting an actual closeup look of  the streets as it snows here at about 8:00 p.m. And we can see the buildings and the roads and the  

Snow and the lights and the  people up close. Even better. So, my alternate plan here is just to sort  of wander around and get to know the town,   kind of at randomly, ’cause it’s  a great way to see a town too.

And while we’re wandering, I’ll tell you  a few things I’ve learned about Hakodate,   some facts I know. If I can remember them. For one thing, there is the tram. You see the tram going. There are two cities in Hokkaido with tram  systems, Hakodate and Sapporo, the capital.

Hakodate, is the third biggest city in  Hokkaido after Sapporo and Asahikawa. It used to be the biggest  until a bad thing happened. But what happened was, well, to go back  in more in history: long, long ago,  

There was Mount Hakodate which formed off the  island, a little bit out into the water. And it   was there for a while, and slowly over time,  sand gathered between Mount Hakodate and the   mainland of Hokkaido. And that sand, which  was a sandy isthmus, that isthmus was done  

Being formed by about 3,000 years ago. And  that sandy isthmus is now where I am now. It’s the city of Hakodate. Originally, there were Ainu people living here,   as most of Hokkaido. Ainu are the  indigenous people of Hokkaido.

And in 1454, the first Japanese person came  here to actually establish a sort of settlement. He built a manor. In 1854, Matthew Perry, the guy who  President Monroe sent over from the   United States to open up Japan, he came up here.

While he was here, one of his  men died and was buried here. He was the first American  citizen to be buried in Japan. By the way, I’m not quite sure where I’m walking. I’m walking towards the mountain  anyway, even though I can’t go up it.

I do recognize that there’s not much  happening out here on this street. But, I gotta tell you, it’s freezing  cold, literally freezing cold. It’s about 0 degrees, and my hand is  very cold ’cause I’m holding this camera,   and the air feels very,  very crisp and really nice.

So anyway, to continue our story, the next year,  in 1855, after Perry came and the guy died and   all that, Hakodate became the first port in  Japan to actually open for foreign trade. This was the first place that actually  saw trade, first port that saw trade. And it was very successful.

Hakodate became a very, very big city. It was Hokkaido’s biggest city  for a long time until 1934. A fire broke out, and of course,  everything was made of wood because   that’s how Japan was back in those days,  and a huge part of the city burned down.

And it was no longer the biggest city  because a lot of people just left;   they’re like, “Yeah, forget  this place,” so they took off. Now, Hakodate is number  three, roughly number three. It’s actually about 230,000 people  live here now, which is respectable,  

Certainly, but it’s lost almost a quarter  of its population in the last 40 years. Just because, people get old and they move  out to the bigger cities down south, and no   one’s moving in here. People aren’t having kids  that much, so it’ll probably continue to drop.

It was also bombed in World War II by  the Allies, as a lot of places were. Let’s cross the road here. Got to be careful because the road  can be a little slippery here. And I’m not a snow and ice guy. I like it, but I’m from  the southern United States,  

And I live in Osaka where we don’t  get this sort of stuff. You know, I think I may have led you astray here.  Perhaps I should turn around and find a   different road. That’s what we’ll do:  next time we see a place where we can  

Cross the road here back to the right, which  would be the west, we’re walking south now,   we’ll cross over. We’ll go one block over, and  then we’ll walk back north towards the station. I’m going to have to put a glove  on while I’m using this camera.

Alright, the lights are red, no one’s  around, there’s no cross right here,   should I jaywalk on my first  night here in Hokkaido? If I end up in jail, it’s your fault. There’s a poster in the train station of,  like, a collage of like Hakodate stuff,  

And it was the view from the mountain,  and it was a park or something like that. One thing was a woman crouching down  just like this, taking a picture of   one of these fire hydrants. And  I didn’t understand it at first.

I was like, “What? Why is she taking a  picture of this yellow fire hydrant?” Then I realized, this is not really a Japanese  thing; this is how they look in America. So I guess to some Japanese tourists,   this just seems really interesting and  foreign or, you know, something like that.

Maybe they are normal here, maybe it’s actually  being used for that here. But there you go:   if you miss America, a little taste of home. And I do kind of miss America, so thanks. I think it would behoove me to put  on my gloves. Where are my gloves?

This is actually the first day of a longer trip  here to Hokkaido. I’m going all over Hokkaido,   and I’m not quite sure what to expect with the  weather, so I brought a lot of layers of stuff. I’m not wearing the stuff now, but  I got like, I’m wearing a hat now,  

But I’ve actually got two hats  that I can wear if it gets colder. I’ve got two pairs of long underwear instead of  one, and three or four, like, real warm Uniqlo inner   shirts, and got two pairs of gloves, one that’s  like a real skin-tight, and one that’s these.

So, I think I’m prepared. Got a scarf. I’m not wearing any of that stuff tonight,  so it’s kind of a test. But this is the   southern point of the trip, so this is  as warm as it’s going to get, probably. I see a wooden fence over here, what’s this?

Oh wow, cool, look at this park. Oh, I’m glad I walked down south after all. Snowball! Ah, it’s been a while since  I threw a good snowball. Okay, anyway, what was this thing? Why, it’s a Shinto shrine.

Normally when you come to a Shinto shrine, you  can ring the bell and get your prayers heard.   And I could do that, but kind of seems  a shame to break up the peaceful quiet here. Don’t know if you can see that. But  up there on that mountain, there are some,  

You see like red and yellow lights and  stuff? That is where I would have gone,   way up there by ropeway, to see this view. But I don’t know, I’m not complaining about  this view, this is nice from down here. I mean…

One thing about Japan is that, different  places in Japan, different regions, have a   different side of the road they tend to walk on.  A different side of the sidewalk. And in Osaka,   we walk on the left, sidewalks and escalators  and stairs and everything. But when people  

From other parts of Japan visit Osaka,  they often tend to walk on the right. I think in maybe Tokyo, people walk on the right.  Here, I don’t know. And I have a feeling I keep  

Getting in everybody’s way, so it might be the right  here, but then a lot of people are walking on the   left. So I haven’t figured that part out  yet. So either I’m annoying everybody or   people need to get out of my way. Perhaps I’ll  solve that by the end of this Hokkaido trip.

A lot of really nice stuff here, like nice. Looks  like a lot of cool like bars and restaurants and   stuff – but nobody’s out. Check it out,  Hakodate beer, nice looking building. Whoa, almost lost my footing  here. Have to step carefully,  

Even when you don’t think you need to, you never  know where the slippery slush is going to be. This has to be one of the stranger  first looks at a city I’ve ever had:   Very, very cold – some wooden animals –

Very, very cold, and not many people around  and just drifts of snow everywhere. And the   sort of psychological feeling  that you’re way, way far north. It’s not actually that far  north like latitude-wise,   I think it’s about the same as maybe  Oregon or something here. It’s just  

That it’s a different situation  with the wind and the weather. I mean it’s 0 degrees now Celsius, 32  Fahrenheit, that’s not really that bad for here,   it gets a lot colder. And some of the cities  I’m going to in the next few days are some  

Of the coldest in all of Japan and have some of  the highest snowfalls of any city in the world. Wonder what this little shed is. Hmmm… Am I allowed to open this? Can’t get it open, probably better not. We’ll never know what  the shed is for. But we can guess! Write

Your best fiction about the cold shed in  Hakodate park and leave it in the comments. [Music from outdoor speaker] That song, I don’t know that song but I  can hear enough of the words to know that   it’s a jingle for this restaurant talking about  Jingis Khan. Which is named after Jingis Khan,  

Or Genghis Khan as we say in English.  And it’s like Mongolian style beef or   something cooked on a little circular grill thing. Choose your own seafood. Okay, we’re here back at the station,  there seems to be more going on,   plus some downright bizarre sculptures and stuff. [Music from outdoor speaker] Cool!

Assuming this music they’re playing is not  something copyrighted that I can’t use this   footage on YouTube for, I will say good night  here. Tomorrow I’m going to wake up and do   something to right a wrong from a previous video,  and I can do it here in Hakodate. I hope it’s  

Open. But anyway, I’m going to call it a night  and I’m go get some sleep in my hotel which seems   pretty warm and comfortable and quiet. And I will  see you tomorrow morning for more of Hakodate. Alright, good morning, it is the  next morning. Um, I have just gone  

To Hakodate station to buy tickets for  today because I’m leaving for Otaru today. Now, the thing I’m going to do today: if you saw  a video recently where I was on a train called   The Kyoto Tango Railway in Kyoto, there was one  station that had – or one platform, train platform  

– that had a foot bath on it. And I was unable to  get off the train to actually use the foot bath. “The one regret I have about not  getting off the train today…” But here in this town, way,   way down here somewhere there is a  public foot bath on a street corner.

I saw it online, I don’t know if it’s open  right now in winter, I don’t know anything   about it. But I’m going to take a tram to get  there. So this is supposed to right the wrong  

Of that foot bath. And I think it’s a really cool  thing to do here today, because even if the thing   is not open or it’s no longer there or something  like that, at least I will have ridden the tram.

I’ve also got this scarf on, I’ve got an extra  layer, I’ve got a wool sweater now underneath all   all the other shirts, I’ve got little  heat pads in my shoes and it’s actually working,   I do feel quite warm out here, it’s about  minus one, minus two degrees Celsius,  

A little below freezing but I feel good except  for my hands and I’ll find gloves for that. It’s about half an hour, about  a half-hour ride through town   on the tram to get to this place  that has supposedly a foot bath.

I wonder if I’m overdressed and then I  see that some people are way underdressed. People! So we are here, we want to go all the way up  here to Yunokawa Onsen. And while waiting:  

I was asking the hotel guy this morning if I could  take a picture of the night view of Hakodate that   was on the wall in a framed picture, behind him  at the front desk. And he said yeah, so I did. But  

Then he went in the back and he pulled this out.  He gave me this: my own color postcard view of it. You know you’ve ridden the tram car far out of   town when you’re the only  person left on the train.

Alright, I see the hot bath, and I see  somebody actually starting to use it,   taking their shoes off and putting their feet  in; that means it’s working. It was all worth it! We got a little story here too: “Almost 400 years’ history. In 1653, a mother who had a son of the Lord,  

The son was dying of a serious  illness, had a strange dream. In her dream, God appeared  and told her to take her   son to the hot spring and there he would be cured. So she took her son to the hot spring  God taught her, and let him bathe there.

Soon he was able to resolve completely. This is the story said to be the discovery  and the beginning of Yunokawa hot spring. It is well known as a beneficial  and good saline hot spring.” So what’s the point of the foot bath? Well:

“The effect of the foot bath is said to  be effective as well as usual bathing. By putting your foot in the hot water,  you can stay longer in the hot spring   than putting your total body, and so blood is  warmed enough and circulates around the body.

Foot bath is very effective especially to the   people who feel swelling or suffer  from excessive sensitivity to cold. Please enjoy our Japanese culture  foot bath and have a relaxed time   watching Yunokawa’s townscape  and feeling a Hakodate breeze.” Alright, sounds good to me,  let’s see how this works. Quite hot. Oh, that’s great.

Between the toes… Alright, we couldn’t get this on the  railway a couple weeks ago but finally! And we have the beautiful Hakodate  cityscape as the sign said. Man, that was so good, that  was so nice. That was almost,   that was almost worth coming  to Hokkaido just for that.

That’s the most relaxing and warm and friendly   and peaceful and wondrous thing  that’s happened to me all day. Well, I think the tram is here, the trams come  every 5 minutes or so, so they’re very frequent.

So what I’m going to do is going to  walk – I have to go get my train,   there are not many trains in Hokkaido  for a lot of routes, so I don’t have much option. So my train’s 10:45 this morning; I have  to be back at the station and I’m way,  

Way, way outside of town now  but the trams are frequent. I’m going to walk a couple blocks just to  get a look at Hakodate in the daytime and   then I’m going to have to call the video  there because the next thing is a-coming. So anyway, foot bath, 800 million thumbs up.

One thing that’s very, very evident here that  really strikes me as somebody who lives in   Osaka is – I’ve said this in other videos – but  there’s just no color in Osaka. There are lights   and flashing things in the shopping areas, but  I mean like people’s houses and most buildings  

Are just gray drab boxy concrete. And here,  there’s lots of wooden buildings and even like   bright colors. I saw a big bright orange building  earlier. I wish we could have that down in Osaka   but we just don’t. The buildings here are often a  little bit worn but they’re obviously, they have  

A different kind of feel to them. This is not  like not like the Japan I’m used to in Honshu. What am I supposed to do, this  guy is waving me somewhere. Escorted even! And the other thing that struck me  about the tram ride is that for a  

Fairly small city, 230,000 people, it’s quite big. I’m many, many kilometers away from  the station and it’s still kind of   a hoppin’ little town out here. So, spread out, I guess . I guess in Osaka and other  big cities down in Honshu,  

Everybody lives up in the sky. There’s  like these big, big tower blocks,   apartment blocks and stuff. And here you  just live on the first floor of wherever. Okay, well I’m the only one waiting here at the  tram stop and I’m going to end this video here.  

The next video will be my ride on a train  through the mountains, through a very steep   and windy mountain train route that is actually  destined to be discontinued in 6 years from now. This is going to be probably my last chance  to take it. Nobody really takes it that often,  

It’s very strange little local line. That all   starts from Hakodate station.  So that’ll be the next video: Today’s big train ride through probably  some very snowy and curly and curvy crazy   mountains. I’m excited, I will  stop talking now. [Tram wheezes] Excuse you!

Um, so anyway, thanks for watching  this look at Hakodate and I will see   you hopefully in the next video on the train ride. Many thanks to my Patreon supporters who  help make these videos possible and who,  

For as little as a dollar a month, can watch new  videos at least a week before they’re published. Special thanks to David Rychly, Jacob Fatz, Lever  Wang, Nathaniel Holland, Omayr, Ray Nichols,   Samantha, and Will Phillips. And thanks to  subscribers to my free weekly email newsletter,  

Which features links to new videos  a day before they’re published,   as well as behind the scenes info from  my travels. Links to both are in the   video description. And thanks  for wandering around with me.