Autumn in Hokkaido & Tokyo 2018 – Day 6 (Hakodate)

Breakfast @ La Jolie Motomachi

Our hotel booking came with complimentary breakfast. Although the selection was not extensive, it was of good quality. There were lots of fresh sashimi and we loved the fact that we can make our own kaisendon with the fresh salmon, ika, ikura and sweet prawns. I also made my own seafood bun. 😘 They even served champagne at breakfast! I suppose this also reflects the European influence as Hakodate was one of the first ports in Japan that opened to foreign trade some 150 years ago. For a complimentary breakfast this was excellent! 👍👍👍

Goryokaku Tower

After breakfast, we drove to Goryokaku tower. It was a 15 mins drive. Parking was free for 2 hours. Entrance fee to the tower cost ¥900 for adults, ¥680 for juniors aged 12-17 and ¥450 for child aged 6-11.

Goryokaku Tower is a 107m tall tower with an indoor observatory deck at the top which accords visitors a great view of the the star-shaped Goryokaku fort below.

Goryokaku Fort was Japan’s first western-style pentagram castle fort built such because it was supposed to have the least blind spots and so enabled better castle defense. The beautiful fort could be seen clearly from the tower and presented a different colour each season – pink in spring, green in summer, red in autumn and white in winter. We got the green colour as Hakodate is the southern most city in Hokkaido and so vegetation is still green, although some trees have started changing colour.

Incidentally, we had soft serve melon ice cream from the souvenir shop at Goryokaku. I had the melon and vanilla swirl and it was yummy! Photo below was taken after I had already eaten the top of the ice cream 😆😆

Motomachi

After Goryokaku Fort, we drove back to La Jolie to park our car and took a walk to Motomachi.

When Hakodate opened its port to foreign trades, Motomachi was the first area to flourish back then, thus it had acquired a Western-influenced streetscape.

The area has many western style buildings and used to house many foreign consulate buildings and churches. Below is a photo of the Old Public Hall which we took the night before. We felt it looked better at night than in the day.

As Motomachi is situated at the foot of Mt Hakodate, it has sloping streets offering views of the port.

We came across a shop with the sign “The Second Most Delicious Ice Cream Melon Bread in the World”. DS could not resist getting one to try after seeing the sign. His logic is that no one calls itself second best. It you are so honest, it must be really good….haha. He bought one with DD taking make tasting bites. And their conclusion? They really liked it a lot. The bun is similar to the “bolo” bun that we have in Singapore and HK. Btw, we tried to look out for the store with the most delicious ice cream melon bread but if there was one, we did not find it…..haha 😆😆😆!

Lunch @ Hakodate Morning Market

We walked back to our hotel just before lunch to check out as we were flying to Tokyo that evening. We had enquired if we could leave our car in their car park after check out, but because of limited parking space they had, we could only park until 1pm. So we just drove to Hakodate morning market instead of walking as originally planned. Parking at the market cost ¥250 per hour.

We strolled through the market deciding what to eat. The market is opened from 5 or 6am in the morning and closes around lunch time. We were not looking to buy seafood at the market but were looking for good donburi.

We ended up at Uni Murakami’s original Hakodate Store. We loved their uni from our dinner in Sapporo and wanted to have it again.

The menu here was mainly just rice bowls. Among us we ordered a uni rice bowl, uni & ikura rice bowl, hotate and uni rice bowl and hotate, ika and uni rice bowl. DD and I had the small size while DS and DH went for large. We ordered an extra uni tempura to share. The uni was placed on a shiso leaf and deep fried. It was very nice. As usual the uni here was especially sweet. 😘 This meal cost us ¥12,796.

This was not all we were going to have. We have read so much about the dancing squid in Hakodate and wanted to check it out. As we strolled along the Market, we came across a stall selling sliced Yubari melon and bought 2 slices to share. As it was near closing time and we did not bargain (we didn’t realize we could) the store owner gave as an extra 3rd slice. The melon was so sweet! Yum yum!

We finally came to Tabiji which is well known for serving the dancing squid. Live squid is killed and prepared for sashimi. But due to chemical reaction when soy sauce is poured on the squid, it starts moving even though it is dead, thus it’s called Dancing Squid. You can see many videos on the internet on this. There is no cruelty here as the squid is dead and it is just a chemical reaction. So it is no different from eating other forms of sashimi. Once the “dancing movement stops” the chef takes back the squid to slice it up (bottom right corner of photo below). The dancing squid is interesting to watch but not nice to eat. It is in fact hard and tough. As we already had our rice bowls earlier, we only ordered the Dancing Squid as sashimi without rice (¥1600). We also ordered a serving of uni (¥1600) and sweet prawns sashimi (¥1100) for the 2 kids.

Kanemori Red Brick Warehouse

Full and satisfied, we left Hakodate Morning Market and drove to Kanemori Red Brick Warehouse. Parking at Kanemori was ¥400 per hour but you get 2 hours of free parking if you spend at least ¥1000 at any of its shops.

Kanemori Red Brick Warehouse is a row of redeveloped warehouses along the waterfront of the Bay Area. They dated back to the haydays of Hakodate when it was a busy trading port during the Edo Period. Today it is a dining and entertainment complex. The iconic warehouses appear in many a photographs featuring Hakodate.

We browsed the many souvenir shops and in no time spent more then enough to claim for our 2 hours of free parking. The kids had ice cream again. This time it was a scoop of gelato each from Milkissimo.

In between our shopping, we sat down for coffee at the coffee joint next to the Snaffles counter and bought some Snaffles Catchcakes to go with our coffee. We liked it so much that we bought more to bring to Tokyo for our breakfast the next morning as we were going to Tokyo Disneyland and wanted to make an early start.

Snaffles is a well known pastry shop originating from Hakodate. Its Catchcakes are actually very light and fluffy cheesecakes. They have many flavours and need to be kept refrigerated. We bought 3 boxes to bring to Tokyo and were given a free cooler bag with cooler packs which could keep the cheesecake for about 4 hours.

After our tea break, we explored further the other warehouses and came across another cheesecake shop Petite Merveille. The cheesecake here is also very light and has a slight similarity to Le Tao. The advantage of this shop is that it is a proper cafe. If we had come across this earlier, we would have had our tea break here instead. The shop is also all decorated for Halloween. So my suggestion if you are here is to have a nice tea break at Petite Merveille, then buy the Snaffle’s Catchcakes as takeaway. This way, you get the best of both worlds.

From Hakodate to Tokyo

We left Kanemori Red Brick Warehouse around around 4.45pm. The drive to Hakodate airport was about 20mins. We needed to top up our petrol before we returned our car. Nippon Car Rental office was just across the road from Hakodate Airport. The car return was simple and hassle free. After we returned our car, we took the shuttle bus to the airport.

After check in, DH and the 2 kids had a simple early dinner of ramen. While I bought a simple tonkatsu sandwich which I planned to eat on the flight. Our flight was around 7.20pm.

We touched down in Tokyo Haneda Airport around 9pm. Collected our bags and took a taxi to our hotel. It was a bit late for the airport bus as it was nearly 10pm already. The taxi was not too expensive. It cost about ¥6200 to Hotel Metropolitan Marunouchi at Tokyo Station. The boot of the regular taxi was quite big and could fit our 2 big bags and 2 cabin bags. Our other luggage and our Studio Ghibli tickets were already waiting for us at the hotel when we checked in. I will write my review of the Hotel Metropolitan Marunouchi at the end of this trip report on Day 10.