Hakodate, Japan

Hakodate, Japan

How’s it everyone? We’re on another trip, but a completely unplanned trip only because of circumstances. Michael over here being a federal employee has been given some time off, not by his own choice. So, we’re going to take advantage of the situation and go holo hola one more time. Hey, Michael, where did you want to go for the next 10 days? Go to Japan. So, why not? So, we’re on our way. We’re going to stop off at Haneda airport, spend the night there, and then move on. And we’ll check in periodically. See you in a bit. The next stop is N5. All right. So, from the Montreal to the Yamanote line, the train that goes around Tokyo, we finally made it to the Shinkansen. And the train we’re on actually had room for two people sitting together. The one that goes directly did not. We’re going to transfer over in Mooroka before arriving in Hokate. And we just left Tokyo station. You can see it area of Tokyo whizzing behind us. And once we get out of the city, this train will pick up a lot of speed. Welcome. So, this is your second Shinkan send. I’m not going to ask you about your experience just yet because we haven’t even hit full speed, but uh look at all this leg room we have. Man, I wish wish the airlines could provide this much space without charging an arm and a leg. So, we’re just going to sit and relax. It’s going to be a 4-hour trip total. We’ll get to Aquad about uh 1:30. Okay, we are transferring trains here to Moroka back to the station here earlier this year. I got an idea. Well, we just say heck with the next train. We’ll take another one maybe four hours from now. Have time to do the walka challenge. You don’t want to ride the train on a full stomach? No, I don’t think so. That goes pretty fast. A lot of bumps, but still pretty smooth ride overall. Yeah, I don’t want to have any accidents on the train. I’ll have to save that for another time. That’s the train we just got off of cuz we’re not going to Shin, we’re going to Hakodate. So, that train will be here in about 20 minutes. And there’s our transfer ride coming into view. And we are so cool. We are in car number one. Check it out. This one has a snake cart. Hey everyone, after spending the night in Tokyo trying to get rid of our jet lag, we are on the road and our first stop is Hakodate. That’s in southern Hokkaido. and never really explored Hokkaido when it wasn’t winter. I’ve always been there in February, so this is a nice change of pace. Also, right on the beach, Michael’s down there somewhere just exploring the waterfront. And if you notice my hair being wet, that’s because we spent some time in an onen just relaxing after pretty much two days of non-stop travel. And oh, that was just so refreshing in a uh natural naturally heated onen. And I’m actually out here because it’s about mid50s for temperatures and I’m trying to cool off. I was sweating so much in the onen and right now I’m enjoying the view before dinner and never thought I’d ever see Hakodate. Oh, one thing I wanted to point out behind B321. Yeah, there’s an arbor and apparently they have monkeys on display. Uh the same ones that like to hang out in a hot springs. They’re about ready to close, so they’re not admitting people right now, but maybe we’ll check it out in the morning. It’s right across the street from our hotel, which happens to be oh behind behind my ear. And the public on faces the uh the ocean. Uh we went to a private onen which faces the mountains. Still has a nice view, but I like an ocean view, you know, being from Hawaii and everything. So, uh we’re going to get ready for dinner and do some walking around afterwards and see uh what this part of Hakodate has to offer. It’s a nice brisk morning. Clouds have rolled in. It’s not as sunny as it was yesterday. And we’re just walking down some roads trying to get to a nearby tram station so we can get to the fish market. And hopefully the ropeway is open. We’ll check that out as well. And look, if I need cash, 7-Eleven is just two blocks away. Cool. Okay, behind me is uh the Hakodate mountain ropeway and unfortunately it’s closed because of mandatory inspections and I wasn’t really planning to get up to the uh peak because of that not realizing there’s actually a road that a bus will uh take up here. Uh didn’t know where the bus station was. But as we approached the uh lower end of the ropeway uh I was content to just visit a nearby park over there but a taxi driver pulled up. He politely reminded us that the ropeway is closed, which we knew. There were a few signs regarding that, but he offered to take us up to the top. I said, “What the heck? It’s not that long in distance.” So, uh, here we are at the top of Mount uh, Hodake, and uh, I’ll turn the camera around and I’ll show you what we’re looking at. I wish it was sunny, but still an awesome view. Now, we’re just at the uh end of the ropeway. We haven’t even uh explored the uh the scenic spot. So, I’m going to walk around and uh see if I can find that. Try and get an even better shot. Sugoy. Even with cloudy weather, this is an amazing view. Let’s do a very slow pan around the bay. I really didn’t know what to expect by coming to Hakuate except for uh just being in Hokkaido. I love Hokkaido in general. just never been to this city before and wanted to uh enjoy a fish market, a different fish market. And even though they didn’t have Hanosaki crab this time, it’s out of season apparently. But the king crab, oh my gosh, that was to die for. I’m just kind of going from west to east across the bay. I’m going to stop. There’s a couple to my right doing some selfies. And I wonder if that’s a Navy destroyer down in the bay down there. Apparently, this place uh this peak gets very popular with tourists in the early afternoon. The lounge is only open between 2 and 4:00 p.m. And the bus going down that we could take. It’ be cheaper than a taxi. First downhill run isn’t until 2:20 in the afternoon and is only 11:00. So if we can keep ourselves entertained, we might stay up here. Otherwise, we saw another taxi we can take going down. Going to be quiet here. and going to turn the camera to my right so you can see more of the beach. We’re not staying in downtown Hakodate. We wanted to stay near an Osen hotel, so you had to get closer to the airport. I don’t know if you can see the airport over there. We’re about two miles west of the airport and with fortunately there’s a short walk we took to get to a tram station and taking the tram is a lot cheaper than a taxi. Oneway taxi costs 1600 yen where an all day tram pass is only 600. And now that we know where the tram is, we can do a lot more in the main part of the city and then go back to the hotel at night. I’m also curious. I mean, I’ll be pointing right at it. There’s a tower down below. I don’t know if that’s a restaurant in there. At first, I thought it was the air traffic control tower, but it’s nowhere near the airport. Might be a good view over there, too. So this is October. Little hazy, a little cloudy, and temperature is about mid-50s right now. Fairly pleasant. This is the first time I’ve ever seen Hokkaido without a sheet of snow and ice. Starting to rain a little bit, but the ropeway inspectors are doing their job down below. Just going to pan over to the south before going inside. Yeah, pretty cool. You know, there’s a funny story about Mount Hakodate. I wasn’t even planning to be able to come up here once we found out the ropeway was closed, but we managed to get up here through the uh assistance of a friendly taxi driver. We arrived here about 10:00 a.m. Oh, that might be our bus coming up. Yeah, you dropped us off at 10:00 a.m. not realizing that the first bus going down wasn’t until 2:20 p.m. And we said, “Okay, well, we’ll deal with it. It’s a beautiful view.” Walked around, checked out the sights. The weather was pretty lousy and I was wishing that the weather would improve and time went on 220 was approaching. the bus showed up. But unfortunately, some poor kid, I guess, had lunch that didn’t agree with him and he lost his lunch on the bus and the poor family had to clean it up and the bus driver was embarrassed. He wouldn’t let us go down with them because the bus really stunk and I don’t blame him. And the next bus wasn’t until 3:55, which is coming up shortly. We just saw the bus on its way up. So, it was originally going to be kind of a non day coming up here. Wed up being an all day event, but you know what? It was worth it. I mean, look at the view now. It’s nice and sunny. The wind has died down. Temperatures warmed up. Got to spend a day with my son with all the Sapoto classic beer you can drink. Yeah, turned out to be a pretty good day. Now, I don’t want to miss this bus. So, I’m going to quit this video while I can and get on the bus so we can get off of this mountain once and for all. But hey, over there near the airport is our hotel and got some sunlight over there. So hopefully we’ll make it down in time for our dinner tonight. We shall see.

Due to the U.S. Government shutdown, my son is temporarily not working. Rather than being bummed out, he grabbed his passport and said he’d like to return to Japan with me. We visit Hakodate, Hiroshima, and Shibuya. Make lemonade out of those lemons!

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