Golden Week Part 1: Hakodate

I have a friend I've known since middle school named Kevin. We played trombone in the same marching/symphonic/jazz bands all the way through high school and studied Japanese together for years. We're both engineers, and we even lived in the same condominium in college. Needless to say, we've got a long history.

Kevin and me at our graduation

Kevin decided to quit his job and go on a journey to Japan and Taiwan for a month, before returning to the US to find a new job. A friend we met at Anime Expo, named Wesley, decided to tag along. They just happened to come during Golden Week.

Golden Week in Japan is heavy travel season. It is a period of consecutive holidays partnered with a weekend, so most people take their vacations during this time. If you want to go anywhere in Japan, it'll cost you 2-5 times as much as it would during an off-season. Apparently, this price hike used to be illegal, but the government decided that the ability to rip people off is a cornerstone of capitalism and should be allowed. Thank you Koizumi Jun'ichiro. Anyways, since hotel prices skyrocket like crazy during Golden Week, these two friends avoided highway robbery by visiting me and using my apartment as their staging ground.

I figured it would be too boring for them to stay in Aomori City for a whole week, so I planned my second trip to Hakodate. I love Hakodate because it's lively and interesting, while decently cheap and easy to get to by ferry. Also, since it was no longer the dead of winter, there were more attractions for us to see!

Since my friends hadn't seen them yet, we went back to the obligatory Goryoukaku Star Fort, Bugyousho (Magistrate's Office), Mt. Hakodate Ropeway, and the scalding Yachigashira Onsen. Here's a few pictures:

Bugyousho in the spring

Panorama of Goryoukaku grounds and Tower

Afterwards, we continued down the cable car line to Yunokawa to take a look at the Onsen Ryokan area. There was a nice footbath near the cable car station, and we warmed our cold feet. My girlfriend, unfortunately, was wearing a tights/socks combo thing, and couldn't get them off without stripping down, so she sat miserably beside us and took pictures.

From right to left: bare-legged local, happy Kevin, and sad Honeybunny

Ab and quad workout air-drying our feet since we didn't have towels. If you look closely, you can see the red/white boundary line where our feet had been soaking in the water.

 
I was starting to feel a cold coming on, so that night, we ate some of Hakodate's specialty 塩ラーメン (salt ramen). We went to a tiny shop in Daimon Yokochou called Ryuou Ramen, where they have a well-advertised 黄金塩ラーメン (Ougon Shio Ramen) "Golden Salt Ramen". When the stuff came out, it didn't disappoint. The stock is made from boiling chicken for ages and comes out a golden yellow. The sweet richness of the molten chicken fat blends perfectly with the added salt and chewy, fresh-cut ramen noodles. I will definitely be back here someday.

黄金塩ラーメン: one of the best I've had in Japan!

On the way back to the hotel, my girlfriend frantically came to me saying she left her phone in the ramen shop. I turned back to go get it, but she told me to stay at the hotel while she went back to get it herself. That sounded fair enough, but I later found out that she had gone to buy a birthday cake for me from Pastry Snaffles, a popular pastry shop in Hakodate with a killer cheesecake. I had almost forgotten that my birthday was coming up until everybody strolled into my hotel room with the strawberry cake. "What's this?" I asked in confusion. They answered with the Happy Birthday song. Ahaha you all totally got me!

The next morning, we went to the nearby 朝市 morning market to get breakfast. We headed straight for the live squid pool, where you can fish your own squid for a little less than 1000 yen. The shop then guts, cleans, and slices your catch for you to eat right away. I'm not much of a fan of squid, but it actually tastes amazing when it's this fresh! It so fresh that the tentacles still curl and writhe when you dip them into soy sauce!

After a bigger breakfast of crab, raw scallops, and sea urchin eggs (Kevin ate a whole grilled mackerel!), we headed north to Ounuma Park. Ounuma Park sits in a small land strip between Ounuma Lake and Konuma Lake. Each is riddled with small islands, which are connected by bridges making a hiking path. The park also has a 14 km bike route (along the road) around Ounuma Lake, and there are many bike rental places that offer bikes for 500 yen an hour (1000 yen for a whole day). It was beautiful, but with the temperature still sitting below 10 C, it would have been nicer if it were warmer.

Ounuma Lake and Mt. Komagatake

As the day ground to a close, we took the train back to the city and paid a visit to the familiar Hakodate burger joint, Lucky Pierrot. This time, we went to the original store in Motomachi near the red brick warehouses. We were all wildly satisfied with our chili-filled hamburgers, except for Kevin, who thought his tonkatsu burger was a bit dry.

Disappointing tonkatsu burger

After wandering through the red brick warehouse looking for souvenirs, we finally called it a day and walked back towards the hotel to gather our things. Along the way, we stopped at a cool-looking boat-shaped footbath near Hakodate Beer. After quickly removing our shoes and socks, we 3 boys recklessly plunged in to discover that the footbath wasn't even lukewarm! Lesson learned: always check the water temperature before going in!

After another 4-hour ferry ride filled with UNO and middle school kendo kids staring at us, we arrived back home in Aomori! Stay tuned for the rest of our Golden Week travels!