It was a jet-lag victory: slept in ’till 7:00AM! We all headed to the local fish market for breakfast of course, and adventures were had.
Our room for one night… sumo was watched 😀Looks like we’re getting close…Even the shirts in Hakodate are all about squid!Ooooooh Sapporo Classic!Breakfast is upstairsBreakfast is served!!!They served us these shears with no explanation, should we be worried?The object in the middle which could be a donkey’s vagina is a whole abalone… still alive
The abalone was a bit of a shock. It was large, and every now and then would give a small slow squirm. We didn’t really know how to approach it, what do you even do with this thing? I guess we were supposed to use the scissors on it somehow? A chef came out, enjoying our panicked confusion, and took it back to the kitchen for a second where he hacked away at it and brought it back out with all the crucial parts ready to consume.
Don’t even know what the crucial parts were! But at least it was finally dead, and in manageable pieces… we all tried some, gotta admit it was not my favoriteThe other parts of breakfast were excellent, especially the fishThis was our breakfast restaurantMore fish market sightsThis is the catch-your-own squid tank… we would have tried it but there was already a lineWacky ice cream was hadLocal elevation map in case of tsunami, showing what will be underwater the fastest
Got back to the hotel, checked out & stored our bags, then went out to see the famous Hakodate Fortress.
Had to catch a tram which was pretty crowdedThis is a scale model of what we’re going to see, turns out that Commodore Perry from the US “opened up” Japan in the nineteenth century on this very spot!They have a giant tower from which you can take it all inIt’s so vast I can’t even get in frame.
We returned from the fortress and hiked around the waterfront for a bit. At one point a school group passed us going in the other direction, and some of them called out “Hello!” Matt replied “Hi” which sent two girls into hysterical laughter for some reason. In a place like Tokyo, no one notices a foreign person at all, but we’re still a bit unusual on Hokkaido.
Found a random lunch place where I attempted to get decent tongue, but no luck… have no idea why the beer logo features the radiation symbol so prominently??Cow-based local taxi 😀Then it was back to the train station, to take a train to where the exciting bullet trains live!Woohoo finally gonna take the Shinkansen!!!
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