We’d opted for a late afternoon departure from Hokkaido back to Tokyo. We’d done so because in the earlier versions of the itinerary, we’d be spending just one evening in Hakodate, so maximising the amount of time we’ll have in the city before heading back to Tokyo seemed to make sense. In the actual trip, we had two evenings, and, well, we’d exhausted all we wanted to see in Hakodate yesterday, normally. And finally, we should had taken a closer look at the rail timings between Hakodate and New Chitose Airport, as the faster limited express train brought us to the airport at 1:29PM – a full three hours to kill before our flight.
We had a morning to spend, so we checked out the Hakodate Morning Market Square – just literally across the road from where the hotel we were staying at. The wife did openly wonder if we should spend time visiting yet another fresh seafood market – this would had been the fourth already – but we’re glad we did. It wasn’t just that the shop-keepers were, generally, friendly and particularly enthusiastic in showing us their produce – those gigantic Hokkaido snow crabs especially – the market is also fairly large, and certainly more so than the positively tiny Nijo and Sankaku markets in Sapporo and Otaru respectively. There are both outdoor/roadside shops, and also shops clustered inside market halls. The produce we saw seemed broadly in the same categories and types as the other markets – i.e. lots and lots of fresh seafood, restaurants that’d cook seafood you pick, goods selling condiments and dried food types, and several sashimi restaurants.
The one thing we noticed that we didn’t see in the other markets were live squid tanks where you can fish to pick the specimen, and the shop will serve them up for you – including raw if you wish. I’m fine with squid, but cooked versions mind you. These shops seem particularly popular among the Chinese tourists: we saw one long queue of them lining up for their turns at one such shop.
The rest of the day was spent making our way from Hakodate to New Chitose Airport, then catching the late afternoon flight back to Tokyo. Our last day in Japan in the next post for Day 15.
Recent comments