Today is tour day.  Argh. It is our first of three on this trip and we are hoping for the best, but….well….we are trying for a positive attitude.  We chose this tour because, what can we say? It was free and literally hits every single high point that we would want to see here.  So, off we go to the theater, get our stickers (hidden on our bodies) and wait to be called for our bus. 

Everything goes pretty well, we’re outside quickly and one of the first on the bus.  Except, wait, the last one on the bus is the lady in the motorized scooter who we saw in the theater and would have never thought she would be with us.  There isn’t a lot of walking today, but there is a significant amount, and a lot on cobblestones or gravel – and then through a market?  Sigh.  So now, everywhere we go, we have to wait while the scooter is loaded and unloaded from the luggage compartment – and wait for her to haul herself off the bus…and…well…tour.  What can you do.

Fortunately we have an awesome guide who gives us the rundown on the day, and then proceeds to make sure we miss all the crowds.  Excellent guiding!  While the other 3 buses fight their way through the Goryokaku tower, she takes us first to the Star shaped Fort, where aforementioned scooter lady says is too far for her and she’ll wait at the bus.  Anyway, we go off the fortress, built in the mid-1800’s to protect the Hakodate Magistrate’s office (which we will tour) from Russia, it never saw enemy warfare.  But in a strange twist of history, it was the site of the Battle of Hakodate, the civil war that ended the last Shogunate’s reign in the area.  This is all Last Samurai territory here – Enomoto Takeaki being the real last Samurai of the Japanese nation and the last to inhabit the Magistrate’s office.  The fort was modeled after the European style forts, with a pentagonal design we will be able to see much better once we go up in the tower. For now, we just see the bastions from the ground level, walking through an arched arbor and then through the gates of the embankment and on to the Magistrate’s Office.

The office is a rebuilt facsimile of the original office, dismantled by the new government after the War of Hakodate.   The original office covered about 32,000 sq. ft., divided into an office area for the magistrate and his staff and the magistrate’s personal residence, but was rebuilt in 2010 at a fraction of its size.  Still, the prefecture did everything it could to make the recreation authentic, including using the traditional forms of construction and materials that would have been used in the 1800s.  Removing our shoes, we tour the offices, passing through the actual Magistrate’s office, the different staff rooms, the courtyard which is oddly bare of any grass or garden or anything green, and then into a few rooms with the history of the building and information on how it was rebuilt.  No photos allowed here either!

After the office tour, we still have time before meeting to walk to the tower, so we wander about the grounds, where you can see the old cement pads where some of the original building stood and generally just enjoying the fresh air and lovely weather.

The group reconvenes pretty easily – everyone is on time – and we quickly make our way over to the Goryokaku Tower.  Perfect way to see exactly how the fort is constructed – you can really see the star shape and how the bastions would protect anything inside.  We spend a good amount of time up in the viewing area just enjoying the scenery – and of course the emptiness because the other tours are now converging on the Magistrate’s office!

Then we head back downstairs for photos of statues the last Samurai and Hisaburo Takeda, the man who actually designed the Goryokaku fort, then out into the giftshop – of course!  Where there were tons of Squid products (the area is famous for its squid) and weird snacks like the corn chocolate (is that puffed rice or popped corn?) and the weirdly chocolate coated potato chips. We choose to buy only some pricey Pringles – ok they are Scallop Pringles.  You can’t resist those!  And take a picture of the cute bear and the tower – no good t-shirts or useful items with that logo, just thought it was cute.

With time remaining until our bus rendezvous, we head outside, buy a couple of iced coffees from the vending machine and sip away outside the tower, enjoying the fresh air.

The next stop is the Morning Market, a huge seafood market where you can actually fish for your squid – then have it cooked for lunch!  This is seriously squid city – Hokkaido island is famous for its squid and you can tell it here with more squid products than you can imagine – and monster crab, the biggest things we have ever seen, and oh super expensive – and octopus – including this huge old octopus in a tank and more squid in a tank that you could choose for your meal.  Plus, squid ink ice cream! Nope, not trying that – but a few others did and said it tasted more like vanilla! Vindicated.

What we really wanted to buy were a couple of Taiyaki – those waffle like fish treats usually stuffed with red bean paste.  These were stuffed with apples and cream – another thing Hokkaido is famous for are their apples. But unfortunately the guy was just starting up his grill and it would take 10 minutes to cook.  We didn’t have that much time before we had to be back on the bus, so dessert foiled.  Oh well – the promotional pictures were fun to see at least. And bonus – another manhole cover!

Back on the bus, we are heading to lunch at the Redbrick Warehouse district, similar to the warehouses in Yokohama.  It is a pretty area, the buildings covered with color changing ivy.  Our lunch is actually at the Hakodate Beer Brewery and Beer Hall. Might not be so bad.  Um, well.  It wasn’t necessarily bad, but we are in seafood central – the place is famous for it’s squid for heaven’s sake – and they serve us grilled pork as the main? It was tasty, but still. There was some kind of fried white fish in this gelatinous sauce. Ick. Not good. And a little bit of a sushi roll with fake crab. There was a quite good salad with little bits of their special local melon that I found surprisingly excellent. But overall, eh.  In a word, disappointing. 

We have free time to wander through the shops, which we do, picking up a couple of snacks and a bear t-shirt for me!  The translation is priceless: The time will come. If you encounter a bear, that’s it.  Too funny!  And what’s with that little alien down there at the bottom?  We’ll never know, but I love it – oh the front says “Danger”!

Then it is off the to indigenous history museum, the Hakodate City Museum of Northern Peoples, which was incredibly cool. Small, but with tons of info on the Ainu, the indigenous tribe that originated here. We thoroughly enjoyed wandering through all the exhibits. The painted panels that illustrated life and customer in each month of the year were great – January in front of shrines, February hunting deer in the mountains, March gathering seaweed on the shore….you can see for yourself in the photos.  We are especially drawn to December where the Ainu are dancing around a bear in a cage.  They consider bears the most precious gods of all the mountain-dwelling animals.  Think we might be Ainu from another life as we revere bears in pretty much the same way!  Gorgeous.

There are displays of clothing, like this Hunting jacket and hood with ears and eyes made from fox and wolf fur that disguised them so they could hunt sea otters. A kimono called a Santan-fuku, an official uniform, highly prized by the Ainu, because it came from trade between the Ming Dynasty of China and the Northern Peoples.   There were glass fiber and bark kimonos and clothing, reindeer fur winter boots and coats, metal belts, wooden figures, all sorts of different historical items relating to the Ainu.  It was a lovely place to explore.  So much so, that I even broke down and bought a pretty set of earrings with the Ainu symbol on them. We bonded over the bears.

Congregating outside, we snapped photos of a bronze Phoenix monument dedicated to the Meijo Emperor’s visits to Hakodate before hoping on the bus for our last stop of he day – the Mt. Hakodate Cable car.

What a fabulous day to do this!  The cable car is a little scary going up that mountain, but once there – the views are worth the ride.  You can see forever out across the Hakodate peninsula – you can even see over to Honshu, the largest of the Japanese islands, often considered Japan’s mainland.  Of course you can see the ship – you can even see the tower and the fort from up here.  Our sweet little guide plays photographer for us – as do we with our awful selfies! 

The ride down is just as frightening – only because it is so fast and well, there are two churches and a Buddhist temple at the bottom of the hill near the cable car station which now everyone is joking are there to bless the cable car and accept the dead for the cemeteries when the cable car falls. Yeah. Thanks people! 

You know, overall?  It was a really nice day – even though it was a tour and after the third stop, the others were all complaining. They were tired, can’t the guide make this a short thing so we can go back? Ugh!!!  And of course scooter lady only did half the things were too much for her.  Did she not read the description? Oh well – seriously we didn’t have a bad time at all – we actually enjoyed it.  Fingers crossed for the next two!!

And we added two more manhole covers for our collection. Excellent day!

Back on the ship, we ditch the show because it’s symphony pianist, and that’s just not our thing.  After a beautiful sailaway, as per usual, we hit the buffet for dinner.  It’s Katsu night, great breaded fried shrimp and the same fish that is in the dining room, although I have to say, it is cooked much better in the buffet.  Not once has anything been hammered as it was in the dining room. It is always perfectly done and juicy. Kudos to the chef (which I give to him when I see him – because he is always there every night!).

Then it is the balcony for the evening, because it is gorgeous out there and we can sit and read and sip our beverages watching the coastline slide away and all the fishing boats out on the horizon.