Christmas in Hakodate
Day 10 of Japan 2017 trip
View of Goryokaku from Goryukaku tower
It's Christmas morning in Hakodate and we have a bunch of stuff to do today. Me and Adrian woke up nice and early to go take a tram to the Hakodate morning market for some fresh seafood.
Hakodate Tram
Hakodate morning market
Hakodate morning market was definitely very busy. A lot of the items at the morning market we didn't feel like investing in eating considering there were a lot of crabs and crustaceans and we didn't want to spend all morning peeling stuff. First off though the main tourist attraction at the morning market is the catch your own squid stall. There's no real technique or skill required as it's basically just attaching your hooked line to a squid sitting in the tank. Part of the schtick here is you pay to catch one and they cut it up for you.
Squid pond
Catching my squid was easy, although it did put up a fight getting out of the water and I ended up getting squirted in the face with water from the squid. The chef took my squid and ended up cutting it up for us. Eating literally fresh squid sashimi was tasty I must admit if we disregard any ethical issues with cutting up live squid in front of us.
That cut up squid was still moving
Seafood on sale at the morning market
Later we opted to buy a crab meat bun. I got a regular one whilst Adrian picked out a black squid ink one. We walked on over to the food court and sat ourselves down at a table and before we knew it some old woman had plopped down a laminated A4 paper in front of us in various languages basically summarising that we had to buy food from one of the food court vendors if we wanted to sit at the table. Yes. Quite passive aggressive of her.
Very busy at the market
Giant crabs
Goryokaku
Today was quite cold and it was snowing throughout the day. We took the tram up to Goryokaku station north of Hakodate city centre then walked to Goryokaku tower.
Goryokaku tower overlooks the Goryokaku fort. A five sided fort built for the short lived Republic of Ezo, but ultimately served as a strategic fort guarding the strait separating Hokkaido and Honshu as well as the port of Hakodate.
View of Goryokaku from Goryokaku Tower
You should be here!
The top of Goryokaku tower served as a great vantage point for checking out the fort and Hakodate city centre off in the distance.
For lunch we went to a restaurant branch of the famous Gotoken curry company. Gotoken curry, I found out is a Hakodate curry company that dates back to 1879 and I saw their curry in many of the other shops in Hakodate.
Gotoken Curry
I would actually rate the curry served by Gotoken to be very close to the quality of Joto curry from Osaka, but Joto curry just has that great taste factor. This Gotoken curry did have great depth to it though. A dark and rich curry sauce.
After lunch, we opted to walk out into the blistering cold blizzard like conditions and take a casual walk through the Goryokaku fort grounds. It was windy as hell and absolutely freezing. One of the only surviving buildings left in the fort is the magistrates building that we tried going for to escape the freezing cold. But alas, you had to pay to enter. At least the grounds were free to roam at least. The path was muddy and I kinda ruined my shoes stepping in ice.
Magistrate's building. Our potential salvation from the cold
Seeing as it was freezing cold and there was nothing to do for the rest of the day, we walked to an amusement centre called Texas Amusement where we wasted time playing some arcade games.
We ended up getting bored and took a bus back to the accommodation we were staying at to warm up as it was getting quite chilly.
Traditional Japanese Christmas Feast
Sunset in Hokkaido is basically 4pm. It got dark very quick. Seeing as it was Christmas time and we were in Japan it was only in the interests of Japanese customs that we had to get KFC for Christmas dinner. We had actually booked this about 2 months in advance too at a particular restaurant in Hakodate.
We scheduled our dinner to be around 6pm as the further it got into the night the colder and darker it was. Wouldn't really want to be outside in the later evening in this particular weather. So off we go to the closest KFC to the city centre which happened to be an epic 45mins away in the suburban areas of Hakodate.
We had to take a tram up to Goryokaku then transfer to a bus. On the bus ride I opted to get into a mexican standoff with an old man on the bus.
Years ago, when I went to Japan for the first time, I offered up my seat to an older gentleman on the train. He refused to sit down despite my gesturing and so I gave up and sat back down. The old man moved to another section of the carriage as people came and went. Another man offered his seat to the old man and the old man refused him. But instead of sitting back down he stayed standing. The old man sat down.
Back to me on the bus to KFC, I stood up and didn't sit back down and the old man I was offering to didn't sit down. So, I sort of stood there for the whole trip.
Colonel Santa in front of KFC
Anyway, we sat down at the KFC. We noticed it was reasonably empty despite how popular KFC apparently was at Christmas time with stories of lines etc. I suppose most people ordered take away.
So for our Christmas dinner we got a special KFC bucket which included:
- KFC Original chicken pieces
- Chicken Tenders
- A salad
- Cheesecake
- A special Kentucky Christmas plate.
The novelty of it all was all too palpable.
KFC Christmas Dinner
After dinner, we took the same long journey back to the Hakodate morning market area with the intention of checking out the ice cream stores for desert. Everything was closed unfortunately. It was only 8pm.
On our way back to the accom, we saw that not all hope was lost. There was Christmas fireworks at the harbour and there were crowds of people. Lucky Pierrot was still open! So we braved the cold Christmas winds and got ourselves some soft serves and Lucky Pierrot's signature Guarana soda.
Ice creams and Guarana at Lucky Pierrot
Merry Christmas!
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