hakodate to sapporo + pics

i'm posting this in a toilet cubicle next to the free wireless access that yahoo sapporo won't let us use in their building, so gotta be quick, but...

We made it. :)

We spent last night in Hakodate, a sleepy port city and stayed at the NiceDay Inn with a nice Chinese lady called Mrs Saito. This morning I woke at 6.30am, showered and woke the boys up at 7am, to go check out the Morning Market, which is right next to the 'Day Inn. I won't quote them, suffice to say next time I cop an earful of that I'll head out alone (actually NJ suggested I do just that). Lots of seafood hustle and bustle, a was a little underwhelmed for once, maybe it was the sight of all those crabs but I planned to eat a lot of seafood in Hakodate and found I couldn't.

After breakfast - we have eaten out of Lawson for three days now - we caught a streetcar up to Goryo-Kaku, a Western-style fort that is the oldest in Japan. Goryo-Kaku is shaped like a pentagon, with five points and a moat all around and you can walk up on the ridges behind the moat. Ambling. There, we saw sakura trees, 1500 of them. The sakura season finishes up there in the next few days, and it was a bit breezy off the water so there were petals flying everywhere, it was quite spectacular. Mrs Saito says Sapporo's sakura will be in full bloom, and even more beautiful.

Here are some pics... Oh, also, I forgot to mention that apart from the cherry blossoms everywhere, up north is really beautiful, rurally-good Japan. We are near Toya on the shinkansen at the moment and the ocean is to our right and mountains to our left. It looks kinda European and it's sunny and warm but biting at night.

Last night we arrived late and went down to the piers and had a few drinks. Not long after, a Subaru-WRX carload of 20-year-olds showed up. One, Aki, was dressed in her pajamas, which was an all-in-one Godzilla suit, with stilettos. There's not much to do in Hakodate at night, and neither group could speak the other's language but we chatted for a bit. I was trying to get them to drive us up to the lookout... but I don't think there was enough room.

Everywhere we go people - specially young people - want to chat... most of the time we oblige, but it is a bit weird. People laugh at everything we say, even in Japanese (no, especially in Japanese). Still, everyone is lovely. Last night on the last leg of our nine-hour marathon we were waiting at a station called Hachinoche and this twenty-something guy from Tokyo who was visiting his family came up and introduced himself and his family, asked what we were doing there etc. We chatted for a bit and then off he went to catch up with his family who had walked ahead - and about five minutes later he came tearing back down the escalators with two plastic bags: his mother had bought us dinner (i think she was impressed we were chasing the sakura, personally), some sweet rice, nuts, snacks, the local cloudy apple juice, coke for NJ and coffee for Hugh... it was amazing. Actually, I'll put him up here too 'cause he was lovely. I don't think I've said that before - how kind and generous almost every Japanese person we have met has been to us... there have been so many occasions. I've been sleeping on all the shinkansen and on the way down to Hiroshima I woke up and this tiny old lady had put her hand-knitted blanket over me to keep me warm.

Jesse - I'll hit you with full cherry blossom force when we get to Sapporo. Get set!!!

x

PS Dont know why these pics didnt work the first time - i blame yahoo. i've given up trying to number them cause this blog site always jumbles them up anyway...

* Aki - chick in Hakodate zipping around in her boy's WRX on a tuesday night in her all-in-one Godzilla PJs and stilettos
* Nice guy whose family bought us dinner in Hachioche shinkansen station (we had just eaten out of Lawson again, too)
* Scallop porn
* A cool 'older' person at the Morning Market (did you like that, mum?)
* Sakura, at the five-star fort