But before the tower there is breakfast (or rather brunch) of course. Hakodate morning market which is just outside of the hotel is pretty famous for the wriggling squid sashimi. Why "wriggling" you ask... Well, in the center of the whole market is a section called Eki-ni and in the center of that is a large aquarium full of squid. For a fee you can catch your own squid and have it prepared on the spot. The preparation is so fast, that the tentacle sometimes still move when served. You can only eat fresher fish when you do it like Gollum and directly bite into the living thing.
I had a look and would have tried it, but yeah... it is famous for that and around 50 people were already queued. Even while a lot of them were couples (love birds do different things in different countries), it would have taken at least an hour, probably more. So no, thanks. I'll leave a link here if you are interested in reading up on the morning market.
Hakodate morning market (scroll down to Ekini-market for the squids)
I did my advance research of course and one of the restaurants accepting the hotel coupon also served squid sashimi.
Raw squid and fried salmon go well together. For the breakfast coupon you don't get a complete squid though 😢
In this restaurant they had a big aquarium with some squids on the counter. One other customer ordered one, the chef caught it with his bare hand and it took him less than a minute to kill it, clean it and prepare it on the plate. It was astounding to watch. Most simple Japanese restaurants have an open kitchen and you can watch how your meal is prepared. No fear of a dirty, dingy kitchen or subpar ingredients.
"Total car ripea". Sometimes you think they just troll the English language very hard.
This is a little Shinto shrine which is prepared for a procession through the market. Probably the deity is enshrined within and is carried around for good luck.
I forgot to post that yesterday. "Be careful of Tsunami. Above sea level of 2.6 m". Normally such a sign would be useless, since.. what would you do in case of a Tsunami? Climbing it won't help much. But in Japan they have public loudspeakers everywhere to warn in case of earthquakes or Tsunamis so you can run to one of the higher buildings and up to the second or third floor. If the Tsunami is higher than that you are probably fucked regardless. Dunno if any man made building could withstand the weight of such a flood wave.
It was unfortunately very hot today and there was almost no wind. It was really difficult to move around much. Parts of Hakodate tower and the Hakodate fishery museum were airconditioned and I took my time hanging around there and cooling off. For the same reason I scrapped the idea of walking around in the shadowless remnants of the fort.
Hakodate Tower
View at the Isthmus and the mountain from yesterday.
A model of the fort. It was but after the forced opening of the country by the American flottilla under Commodore Perry. Hakodate was one of the first ports which were opened for foreigners after the events of 1852-54. Read here.
There was only shadow on the outskirts.
After sitting there a while and watching the single duck swimming around and some read headed European tourists (I am pretty sure I belonged into that category, too) I craved another air conditioned room and found the nearby Museum of fishery. Entry into museums is very cheap in Japan. In this case it was 100 yen for adults, so like 62 cent. The exhibition wasn't that large, but well made. Hakodate was and is an important fishing harbor. From here you have easy access to the sea of Sakhalin, the bay of Kamchatka, the Bering and the Chukchen sea in the arctic. The bay itself is also a well sheltered natural harbor.
This polar bear was big.
But this sea lion was war bigger.
The elderly museum warden explicitly showed me their collection of tin can wrappers. This stuff was (is?) made in Hakodate factories.
The best part of the exhibition. The AC. I stood quite a while in front of it, admiring the ingenious design.
Some historical pictures. They had a lot of them and they were interesting to watch.
A whaling cannon with a harpoon. They had a screen with a video about how this was used. I have no idea how they ever hit a whale with it. You have high waves, so that the bow of the ship is moving up and down very fast, the whales are moving targets and the ballistic curve of the harpoon fixed to a rope is a nightmare in itself. And they need to hit the lung.
A modern and a classical harpoon which was thrown by hand by the specialized harpooneer. If you ever read Melvilles' "Moby Dick" you know about it.
On top are baleen, German "Barten" or "Fischbein". They are hard, yet flexible and were used for example in womens' corsets ("Fischbeinkorsett").
The different crabs of the northern seas.
That one was even bigger than the sea lion.
Here I took a photo of the teeth with my size 46 boot for size comparison.
Now we are in the medieval and older area.
Fur underwear.
And finally some fishing hooks and harpoon head of the Jomon period which was before christ.
That was that. The next venue with an AC was a Tonkatsu family restaurant a few meters from the museum. You have to eat Tonkatsu (breaded pork, like "Schnitzel", but thicker and juicier) at least once in Japan, but I wasn't really hungry yet and went for the Shrimp and Scallop set. I have to do the pork some other day.
You get this little mortar with roasted dry sesame on the left ad the service women explained to me three (!) times that I have to mix it with the sauce from the blue pot on top and use the pestle to mix it. OK, when they insist so much... I probably didn't take enough sauce, but it was enough for me. The sauce in the plastic bottle is for the cabbage hidden under the shrimps. On the right side is a small patch of mashed potatoes, probably only serving as a stand for the cucumber slices.As you can see, they put little griddles on the plate so that any extra oil from the deep-frying can escape.
The bread crust was very crunchy, the scallops and shrimp were very fresh and juicy. And these are real shrimps. In Germany they are often artificially made of some shrimp paste. By the way: Cold tap water is served automatically and often even with ice and refilled for free. Even in the cafe with the cheese cake yesterday.
I was so full that I decided to skip dinner in any case, went back to the hotel, fell into my bed and woke up 4 hours later. Seems I was more exhausted than I thought. Now it is exactly 22.22h and I will pack my luggage and then call it a day. Tomorrow the trip to Sapporo awaits, and I have to decide how to proceed from there. Will I go north to Wakkanai which is just a few kilometers from the Russian Sakhalin? Or will I visit the national Ainu museum which is somewhere in the wilderness? I guess the latter, but I have to check connectivity, hotels and such.
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