Hakodate (函館)

Well, we flew on a JAL flight from Tokyo’s Haneda airport to Hakodate in Hokkaido Japan (the northernmost island) for our two night stay. The flight was only an hour. It is still winter here in Hokkaido so there is a fair amount of slush around and it hovers around freezing on most days. In fact when we left Noboribetsu today bus-bound for Sapporo it was snowing hard.

Northern Japan has such a different feel from Honshu and especially Tokyo – it really is hard to convey in words (look at the pics – especially of the real dock area). The weather is more real and you are closer to Mother Nature in Hokkaido. Hakodate’s downtown was very “small town USA” feel – there were no skyscrapers and it was nowhere near the level of people of Tokyo.

We stayed in Hotel Banso Ryokan. A ryokan is a traditional Japanese inn where you sleep on the floor on futon and bathe in a public bath house. There is also a traditional tatami (woven bamboo floor) room and you remove your shoes before entering the tatami room as well as switch shoes in order to go into the bathroom. The meals are also delivered to your room by a female hostess and you eat in your room. Ryokan and Onsen (the latter to be discussed in the Noboribetsu post) are very popular vacation destinations for Japanese tourists, as well as tourists from the nearby Asian countries. We saw no western foreigners aside from ourselves in Hakodate. Since arriving in Hokkaido, we have only seen two other white people.

Speaking as a white male, it is very interesting to be in the complete minority here in Hokkaido (I guess all of Japan – but it really hits home up here). In Hokkaido I find that people stare at you blatantly and talk about you behind your back. I never heard any bad things being discussed, more often, people were confirming in Japanese that we were speaking English and making comments about the English language or America in general. While most people were very nice, I had a few people prefer not to speak to me in Japanese or pretend that they couldn’t understand my Japanese. I’m convinced that one man purposefully slammed the elevator doors close on me as I was going out and hurt my arms. The tourist materials mark Hakodate as a great tourist attraction and perhaps it is for Asian visitors. I didn’t feel very welcomed. Whether in the bath or at the traditional Japanese breakfast buffet, I felt that people were staring at me and didn’t really want me there.

It was a bit of a shock to move from the four-star Dai-Ichi Tokyo Hotel to the one-star Hotel Banso. While not bad, our room was stained and the furniture heavily used. The food delivered to our room was quite delicious. The main public bath was closed so we had to use the smaller second-grade public bath (more on bathing to come in the Noboribetsu post). Nobody talked to me in the bath, but my mom said that the Japanese women kept talking to her even though she couldn’t understand.

Our first day we took the street car around to the tourist dock area where there are tons of souvenir shops. We ate lunch at the Hakodate Beer Hall Restaurant. We also bought some yummy squid jerky and senbei (rice crackers). The dock area of Hakodate (the real dock that we went to first my mistake, not the tourist one) reminded me so much of my trip to Juneau, Alaska to visit my friend Lia. The weather was similar and the mountains even looked the same. I was very nostalgic for Juneau.

Hakodate was one of the first areas the European sailors came to and added their western influence. Because of this, Hakodate’s tourist dock area is a bit like the fictional "America Town" restaurant seen when The Simpsons visit Japan. There was lots of English and you can see examples of some of the westernized signs in the pictures below. Also, the stores blasted western music like TLC and Alanis Morissette – but nobody cared to speak English of course (except the people at Snaffle’s Pastry). The products were mostly all traditional Hakodate / Hokkaido fare, but every now and then you'd see classic Americana items like prints of old U.S. ads.

We also toured the main downtown drag and I got to go into a Yamaha store. I got to play the piano for all of three minutes and banged out a poor man’s version of the title song from My Neighbor Totoro, which I grabbed the sheet music to upon entering the store. I was expecting a back rub from the female clerk for serenading them with their favorite Miyazaki tune, but I got nothing, not even a courtesy smile. The Yamaha building was seven floors of and was actually a music school for kids and adults. I thought of a brilliant idea – combined English and piano lessons. I figure all Japanese mothers want their kids to learn how to play the piano and speak English right? If I offer cheap enough combined lessons this summer in Tokyo, I can make a fortune. In all seriousness, I really miss playing the piano both by myself and with SImps.

The next day we hung out around the hotel and went on the Mt. Hakodate tramway ride and bus tour in the evening (see the pic below). Our bus tour guide had the most pleasing voice in the world. She also never took a breath - Her voice was a constant stream of smooth, effortless Japanese. She was the female Japanese version of C3PO. She also had way to much makeup on. Her face was almost geisha white while the rest of her was regular Japanese skin tone. We sent our baggage forward to Noboribetsu Onsen and departed on a JR commuter train for the hot springs, the trip would take two hours, and I would not arrive dry.

See you in Noboribetsu! TO BE CONTINUED...

B.E.W.