Day 21 — Hakodate day off - Tom and Marilee Retire to the Road

September 23, 2025

Day 21 — Hakodate day off

Marilee here.

A day of sightseeing and errands in Hakodate was ahead of us, so we made sure to fill up at the breakfast buffet (as our kids will tell you, we are in general opposed to long lunch stops — or really any lunch stops at all — so a big fortifying breakfast is needed). An exciting innovation was introduced to us at this hotel buffet: an automated pancake maker. Batter was squirted onto a little conveyor belt and ran between rollers to flatten it while it cooked. Tom gave it a try and pronounced the results very tasty. There were many topping options— whipped cream, jams, and a bowl of a thick beige substance labeled “peanut cream” which tasted like the center of a filled peanut butter sandwich cookie. Interesting, but I think it’s unlikely to win out over maple syrup.

The first order of business after breakfast was buying ferry tickets to take us to Aomori the following day to begin the next leg of our journey, south through Honshu. The ferry terminal was a few kms away so we jumped on the bikes (so light and wobbly without the weight of all of our belongings hanging to the frames!) and headed off for what looked to be a short and straightforward errand. Of course, we ended up at the wrong ferry terminal on the first go, so we got to see more of Hakodate’s industrial port area than planned, but we still succeeded in getting the tickets we needed, and it wasn’t even 9:30 yet. The day stretched out before us, full of non-biking possibilities.

We started by revisiting the Goryaku Fort that we’d cycled through the previous afternoon. It was built in the mid-nineteenth century, when Hakodate became one of the first few Japanese port cities to allow foreign ships into their harbors for trading. Today it is a lovely park, filled with hundreds of cherry trees. It must be an amazing sight in cherry blossom season.

We rambled around on the fortifications and then sat and watched the world go by for a while, until we started to feel that we needed to be accomplishing more tourism.

The main building inside the fort. Although it looks old, it’s a recent reconstruction.

We headed off to see more of historic Hakodate, boarding a charmingly slow and rickety trolley car, which despite the retro feel seemed to be actual public transportation, not just for tourists. It delivered us to the local morning fish market, full of tiny stalls and restaurants. Here the local speciality seemed to be squid, with one restaurant even offering customers the opportunity to catch their own from a big swimming pool filled with squids of varying sizes.

Well, we didn’t linger at the market because a major tourist draw was just a few blocks away, so we hustled over to make sure we beat the crowds:

That’s right folks: Japan’s first concrete utility pole.

Installed in 1923 and in use ever since. Also, although it’s hard to tell from the photo, square and rather elegantly tapered. Altogether, one heck of a tourist attraction.

Joking aside, it was rather interesting — almost every old wooden building we’ve seen has an accompanying sign detailing the many times it has burned down and been rebuilt, and so the installation of concrete poles was part of a push to move away from wood construction. A few blocks away was one of the first Buddhist temples to use concrete, built at about the same time as the pole, apparently to great local opposition. To prove that it was safe the builders hired hundreds of geishas to dance at the opening of the temple.

We spent most of the rest of the afternoon wandering around the historic district. When the port was opened to foreign trade, the European traders were restricted to one area of the city, which as a result now has an interesting and unique mix of western and Japanese buildings, churches and temples.

Old brick warehouses— now full of trendy shops and restaurants

We stopped for ice cream at this little corner shop.

The old town hall — very mid-Victorian gingerbread-y

Continuing the east meets west, cultural mashup theme, we ended the day at a Hakodate institution: a Lucky Pierrot hamburger restaurant. It’s a local chain, apparently with 17 locations, all in this one mid-sized city. It’s a clown-themed, retro-diner ambiance, with (at the location we visited anyway) many framed pictures of cherubs and many enormous plastic ice-cream cones. And a menu that ranges from hamburgers to spaghetti, to filled omelets, to hamburger steaks with rice.

A lineup out the door at our local Lucky Pierrot

Today's ride: 9 km (6 miles)
Total: 1,034 km (642 miles)

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