Day 20 Japan
I have knocked off 2 of the 3 things on my to-do list! Go me!
I walked into a few glasses stores / optometrists until I found one that had the appropriate nosepiece things for my sunglasses. Success! Finally one had them and charged a ridiculous price for them but I don't care. I can wear my sunglasses again without them gouging a hole in the side of my nose.
And I made a Japanese barber's morning when I walked in and got a haircut. Conveniently there was a place between the station and my hotel that was doing 1000 yen haircuts (about $12 AUD). So I walked in and tried to explain what I wanted. I just started making buzzing noises and miming a set of clippers all over my head and beard and her eyes went wide. She obviously got the message but I'm not sure she approved.
So I found a picture of a shaved head on the Internet and pointed to it. She obviously still didn't believe me because she shaved a tiny bit off my sideburns then looked at me in the mirror to make sure I wasn't panicking. I should have done something at that point as a joke but I just wasn't that interested in making her cry or something.
It always takes so much longer when someone else cuts my hair than when I do it. It's like barbers have pride in their job or something. They have to make sure the hair is even at the back and that it's done with the grain or whatever. Just do it! She did do a good job though so I can't really complain.
A bunch of Japanese dudes were in there also and they all seemed to be having their hair washed and dried before any cutting would take place. I don't get it. A haircut is a task that needs doing quickly not an exercise in pampering. No thank you.
So 2 tasks done. 1 to go - thongs.
I went and burned out the ingress portal again before my haircut to top up on gear. Thanks Morioka! I left with a full inventory and with more bursters than when I left Australia.
Today's journey was a trip from Morioka to Hakodate. Hakodate is a port city on the northern island of Hokkaido. It would take about 3 hours to get from Morioka to Hakodate. About 2.5 of that is on the Shinkansen where I got to go through a tunnel under the ocean separating the 2 islands. And the other half hour was transferring to a local train that went the rest of the way to Hakodate.
I was a little disappointed with the tunnel. I didn't really think about it but I kind of wanted it to be a big Perspex tunnel where I could watch a real life version of Giant Shark vs Giant Octopus or see some shipwrecks or something. Obviously it was a giant concrete tunnel that fit 2 trains and all you can see were lights on the side of the tunnel. I guess we don't live in the future yet :(
The weather was pretty miserable when I arrived and the train station was surprisingly packed! I didn't expect there to be so many people there. Windy, overcast and raining a little bit but touristing doesn't wait for the weather! I arrived at my hotel and to my shock they actually let me check in a couple of hours early. I guess they don't have a lot of guests in this season. I have clearly entered the last of the midgets as I was a good 3 or 4 inches taller than the door of my room. I could tell this was going to cause me pain at some point.
Hakodate was not one of those cities I had planned to visit from the beginning so there weren't any big ticket items I really wanted to see. So I just found a couple of blog posts on the Internet about what other people had seen there and cherry picked what I thought would be reasonably interesting.
I started with lunch though! Salt Ramen is apparently their special ramen here. Basically a clear salty soup. Very tasty but not as big a flavour hit as a tonkotsu or something.
First up were the ruins at Fort Goryokaku. If I remember the stuff I read this was the point at which the Japanese civil war ended which resulted in the end of the feudal system and the beginning of Japanese society today. Designed by a European this is one of the first defensive structures in the new style. It's basically a giant star with a moat and stone walls. There's only 1 original structure left and it was a barn or something but is now a cafe and souvenir store. There's a big building in the centre of it now that used to be an administrative building for the prefecture but which is now only used for tourists.
It's quite a beautiful park now with a lot of huge trees, grassland and walls to climb. Interestingly they have also outlined areas where houses or other buildings used to sit to give people an idea of how the castle was structured. I really enjoyed walking around in there for a while. Very pleasant and a really big place. Would have been thousands of people in there.
Around the corner is an observation tower where you can get a good look at the shape and size of the place from above as well as Hakodate city and the harbour. Despite the weather it was a nice view of the city and it was pretty cool to see the castle grounds from above.
They had a pretty cool little storytelling mechanism in there as well. They had a series of maybe 16-20 Perspex boxes telling the history of the castle ruins and the founding of Hakodate. Each box had a couple of scene made out of models / figurines, a couple of sentences explaining it and a 3 or 4 frame comic explaining it as well. It was pretty cool and I thought it was a good mechanism to explain something to a variety of age groups.
Next I went to a couple of department stores about 15 minutes walk away to try and get myself some thongs. No luck. Plenty of indoor slippers (made of cloth so not suitable for outside) but no outdoor ones. Another never ending quest.
As an aside I have 3 never ending quests now:
1. Find the perfect hollandaise sauce.
2. Find out how to use the 3 seashells.
3. Buy thongs in Japan
I feel like I've come close with the first one but the other 2 are proving elusive.
Now I'm heading down to the bay area to have a look around. Apparently this is a big culturally significant area in Hakodate because it has a bunch of buildings from some era (Edo? Meiji?) that help illustrate Japan's move to its modern incarnation.
One of the things down here is a bunch of red brick buildings. Basically they built all these factories and stuff out of red bricks. Now the whole area has been turned into a big tourist district. It's kind of disappointing really. I would have preferred they turn the factories into museums or art galleries or something but instead they have been filled with souvenir shops for tourists that come in on cruise ships.
The area is beautiful don't get me wrong. They have restored the buildings really well and the area is full of light and it's very pleasant to walk around but it's just bland. It's just another boring tourist area now. If you ever get here just look at the buildings from the outside and move on. Don't disappoint yourself by actually going inside.
The other thing in this area is a bunch of European style houses built for rich merchants. Another beautiful area with some well maintained buildings. A bit more interesting than the red brick area and also a lot quieter since it's uphill and there's no shops. One of the streets there could have come straight from San Francisco. Tiered uphill street with similar style of houses on it. I didn't bother going into the 1 building that was still open but it was a nice place to walk around and there was a good view of the harbour and city from there. The view was good enough that I also didn't bother getting the cable car up to the top of the mountain to do the city lights viewing thing which everyone on the internets recommended.
I also ran into some of the worst kind of tourists up here. Dangerous ones. There was this group of 3 middle aged tourists trying to get some good photos down the San Francisco street by just standing right in the middle of it and expecting cars to go around them. Absolute dickheads. I might have yelled at them and gestured in exasperation and they got out of the way after that. #superhero
So that was pretty much it for my sightseeing that day. It was about 8pm and I was getting hungry so I did a quick search for and found a craft beer bar. Unfortunately the bar was alllllll the way back near the castle ruins so I got back on the tram and rode my way back up there.
It was a pretty cool little bar but I was only one there and there was no English happening on the menu or by the owner. Google translate to the rescue! I ended up trying each of the 4 Japanese beers on tap (a very nice peach beer) and had a couple of things from the menu (cheese platter and fried chicken - classic).
Back on the tram and back to the hotel after that and a shower in the smallest bathroom in Japan (probably not but it felt like it).
This is the night I ended up losing my Hanshin Tigers hat (nooooooo!). The beer surely had nothing to do with it.
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