The more impressive thing is that Hakodate has done something that many other Hokkaido cities and towns are going to have to do if they want to survive financially in a prefecture whose population is drying up or leaving along with its sources of income. Towns and cities are going bankrupt all over Hokkaido and it’s partially because many of them refuse to shift their economies over to tourism – something that is in veritable endless supply in Japan’s final frontier. Hakodate, whether they feel entitled because of their unique history or simply because they have wised up, has very effectively shift ed the majority of their economy to tourism while maintaining a functioning commercial and pleasure port. They have numerous “local specialties” sold at beautiful bayside restaurants with people lining up to get a seat, dozens upon dozens of parks, and countless points of interest (conveniently explained in two languages).

Of course, most cities and towns don’t even begin to have the history that Hakodate does but that’s no excuse. There’s always something of remote interest, or a specialty food. Hell, put some outside dining in front of a scenic field.  A little charm goes a remarkably long way. Cities like Muroran, where the steel and oil industry are struggling to provide income while a beautiful bay stays wrapped tightly in a blanket of rusted warehouses, collapsing homes and unused docks, need to understand that they have more than one source of income. The longer they wait to figure that out, the more the city center will rust out to nonexistence, and the less certain their future as anything other than a once prominent port town turned scrap pile will be.

But I digress. Hakodate does it well. We walked the sights and stopped for lunch at California Baby, a supposedly western restaurant that specializes in buttered rice with assorted toppings. Meghan had the Cisco Rice (buttered rice with a kind of demi-gras sauce and a sausage with a side of potato salad) and I had a chicken sandwich which was the closest thing to a chicken salad sandwich that I’ve had in a long time. Meghan also had a quite delicious beer that goes by the (translated) name of “Northern Fox Red Beer” which is apparently brewed in Oregon and makes its way across the 44th parallel to (I think) Nemuro. It’s always nice to find a real beer in Japan.

We made our way back to the rider house to pick up our hanami (flower enjoying) gear that Meghan had, in wonderful foresight, packed up the night before. We tossed two panniers full of plates, the stove, tarp and assorted other things onto the bikes and headed to the remains of the famous star-shaped fortress now known as Goryokaku Park. We arrived with a fair amount of sun left and enjoyed the flowers and some beers as we watched young lovers in rented row boats unskillfully navigate the terribly inconvenient, star shaped moat that surrounds the park. Needless to say, hilarity, splashing and scraped boat sides ensued.

As the sun went down, we packed up and headed back downtown towards our area of the woods but decided to stop at the Hakodate Brewery Restaurant for a sampler. We each grabbed a sampler that included three to four beers (all were acceptable but nothing amazing) and shared a plate of very overpriced but delicious fried squid sticks. Squid is one of those foods that I will never look at the same again after leaving Japan. It’s good. Very good. Before Japan, I was back and forth on all things squidy and octopus-like. No longer. Take fresh squid, slap it on the grill for a couple minutes, pour a little dashi over it and you have a straight-up delicious snack. Takoyaki? I won’t even begin to go into my obsession with those tiny, doughy, fried up balls of octopus.

After the sampler and squid, we decided to cycle over to Mt. Hakodate to check out the one thing that everyone told us we HAD to do – see the “night view” of the city. As we approached Mt. Hakodate, the lines of cars became more and more clear. Traffic stopped and we gleefully blasted past them on our self-propelled vehicles. As we got to the base of the cable car (that you take to the “night view” platform), the line to actually go up in the cable car became painfully apparent. Thousands, I tell you, were waiting. So we both agreed to tell everyone that we had seen the night view and it was beautiful and we fired down the street to see if we could make it to a soup curry restaurant, Megumi, we had seen earlier before closing time. We made it. We had soup curry. It was good but our little soup curry joint in Muroran still wins.

We retired to our garage bunk bed and tried to ignore the flickering neon light and smell of gasoline as we fell asleep.

The next morning we got up bright and early (not really by choice), packed up our panniers and headed upstairs to nab the free toast and coffee. There, we chatted with some of the breakfast bikers about what we had seen and done, talked to the mama-san and her husband about bringing bikes on trains (as we had long ago decided we were going to take the train back – being the high-class luxury lovers that are) and met a very nice, but quiet Malaysian undergrad who was studying at, as chance would have it, Muroran Institute of Technology – not ten minutes from our house. I knew that bringing bicycles on trains in Japan was very doable but that a bag (called a rinko bukuro) was needed. I asked the owners of Lime Light if they knew where we could buy some. He said a blue tarp would be fine as long as you wrapped it tightly around your bike. That was good news – but we only had one tarp. So he lent us a bike bag making us promise we would mail it back it him. Amazingly nice people.

We said our goodbyes and thank yous and headed off to the Morning Market to grab some fresh seafood before hopping on our 12:30 train back to Muroran. We saw a little bit more of Hakodate, tried to nab some Lucky Pierot Burgers before lunch, failed, and boarded our Muroran-bound train.

Getting the bicycles on the train was no problem. The only minor issue came in dealing with our reserved tickets. Until then, we had almost always purchased unreserved seats as it was always a bit cheaper. This time we decided to get reserved seats since it was only about 5USD more and we had a lot of luggage. I’m not sure why, but I just assumed that the reserved tickets simply allowed you to sit anywhere in the reserved cars – dumb. So we put all our bags down, settled in and waited for the train to start moving. At about 12:25, I got up to snap a picture of the bikes nestled in the back of the train when a guy who had been awkwardly perched in between cars stopped me and and asked,

“Is this car 1? I’m kind of confused,” while showing me his ticket.
“Yup,” I said. “This is car one. Looks like you’re in the right place.”
“Oh thanks.”
“No problem,” I replied and started walking off.
“Well, what does your ticket say?”
“I’m pretty sure it says car one but I guess I’m not sure now that you mention it,” I responded.
I fished for my ticket, pulled it out and noticed the it did not, in fact, say car one but car two. And actually had seat numbers.

The guy had been standing there pretty much since we got onto the train at 12:10 and HAD WAITED UNTIL THE TRAIN WAS ABOUT TO MOVE TO TELL US WE WERE IN HIS SEAT. I had a small, internal, mental explosion at his ridiculously indirect way of telling me I was in his seat and his inconsiderate timing, thanked him for letting us know (perhaps I’ve become more Japanese than I realize), informed Meghan, and began running all our bags around to the following car as going down the aisle was an impossibility.

We finally got settled. We both leaned our seats back and watched as our four day trip down to Hakodate passed us by in two hours.

We packed up in the wind, finished out chat, and headed out toward Hakodate. The day, which started out gray, rainy and windy, quickly turned to a light breeze with wonderful sunshine almost as soon as we left the lake area. (It should be noted that Lake Onuma, and it’s smaller lake brother, are a wonderful little tourist spot with lots of little restaurants, boats to rent and some nice free camp sites. Well worth a stop if you are near the area.) The ride from Onuma to Hakodate, however, is mostly unremarkable. Since Hakodate is on the opposite coast, this part of the trip was mostly rolling hills and fields. As you get closer to Hakodate, naturally, the city grows and you eventually find yourself in the middle of chaotic six-way intersections (one of which is a train line).

Note: Meghan has just told me that the Octopus Shop wasn’t actually on the leg from Onuma to Hakodate but actually on the Yakumo to Onuma leg. Woops! Anyway, it’s still on Route 5 I believe – unless it’s called 37 up there.

The two most notable stops on the way from Onuma to Hakodate were the Octopus Shop and the Konbu-kan. The first we almost didn’t even stop at. I was rolling at a brisk pace when I looked up and noticed a very “wild west” looking wooden building wearing a large white and red sign that read “Octopus Shop”. I was mildly intrigued but not overly excited – until I saw the rows of drying tentacles that hung in the entry way to the store. Having long been a fan of takoyaki (fried octopus dumplings) and “Day of the Tentacle”, I simply had to stop. My was it worth it. The store had tons of samples, loads of crazy dried octopuseses and half the staff was incredibly  friendly. I highly recommend it if you find yourself on Route 5 from Nanae/Lake Onuma to Hakodate.

Our second stop is quite well known is about 15km outside of Hakodate. The Konbu-kan (konbu being a kind of seaweed and kan being a store/building/establishment/market) is a market that is devoted entirely to foods and treats made from this kind of sea weed. Although that may sound pretty non-delicious to the unsuspecting western palette, one quickly finds that konbu and its many offspring are quite delicious (and sometimes not so). We picked up a couple bags of barbecued konbu with sesame seeds – a wonderful beer time snack.

After the Konbu-kan, we hightailed it to Hakodate; stopping only once for some tasty soba in a more residential area of Hakodate. At about 3pm we rolled into the neighborhood that seemed to have a couple hostels and other accommodations. I should note that Golden Week is a terribly congested time of year for Japan as people take this time to travel around and (in Hokkaido, at least) see the cherry blossoms. For this, they usually head to Hakodate. We were rolling into Hakodate, during Golden Week, with no hotel reservations of any kind and camp sites, as with most cities, are nowhere to be found. We stopped at the first hostel on my map (Hakodate YGH). I headed into the entry way of the hostel and in my most polite Japanese started, “I know it’s terribly late to be asking this and we don’t have a reservation, but, I was curious if you had any rooms available…” and she started laugh. Ha. Shoulda known. I asked if any other hotels or hostels in the area might have space and she laughed again saying she didn’t really know but that she really, really doubted it. I left, relayed the news to Meghan and we pedalled off mildly worried.

Our next attempt was a rider house. I’ve mentioned this before but rider houses are accomodations that are aimed primarily at short stay motorcycle tourists. This was all I knew of rider houses as we headed to our first one to see if they had any room.

Lime Light Rider House, several blocks from Hakodate station, is a very unsuspecting little establishment with only a crudely painted sign hanging outside and rows of motorcycles on the sidewalk to let you know you’re in the right place. I very skeptically entered what I can only guess was the front door. The entry way had no desk or anything of the kind – just a pile of shoes, the potent smell of gasoline and stale cigarette smoke, and a whiteboard sign stating, “Welcome! We are upstairs. Come on up!” I did just that. Upstairs, there was a corridor of closed doors where I could hear kids laughing and general chatter. I started politely with me, “Excuse me”s and “Anybody here?”s. No answer. Eventually, I knocked on the door to find a bunch of people sitting in a living room, watching tv, chatting and reading. “Is this the reception?” I asked. A portly, middle aged woman answered that it was, in fact, the reception. I asked about space available and she said the last two spaces were still free for tonight. Relief! I ran down to tell Meghan and we started to move our panniers inside. We sat in the living room with the rest of the guests, made idle chatter, haggled the price down to 2oooen a nights since we would only be using one bed (was going to be 1500en each) and we’re given a boat load of information and a wonderful little map by the mama-san of the establishment.

Then she showed us to our “room”. We walked around a bit as she explained where the facilities were and about free coffee and toast in the morning. We finally entered a garage full of motorcycles, old bicycles, helmets and bags. She pointed to top bed of a group of four bunks and said, “There you go! The doors are never locked so feel free to come back whenever! Let me know if you want to stay another night!” and she was off. Meghan and I stood for a moment motionless. No lockers? I hope this is a trustoworthy bunch. It turned out to be very safe and friendly and, as I later found out, there was always someone on guard – not that any criminal in there right mind would try to rob a garage full of bikers. Still, Lime Light and rider houses in general are something that I don’t think I would trust in the states – or anywhere outside of Japan for that matter.

After dropping of our bags, we went to Hakodate Onsen Hotel for a quick bath and then headed to the famout Goryokaku Park to meet up with some friends. One of the best parts of that first day in Hakodate, for me, was the joy of not having all the weight of the panniers and zipping through traffic on our way to the park. While loaded panniers aren’t horribly weighty, you get quite a spring in your pedals when you first find yourself without all that added weight.

On our way to the park we grabbed some yakitori (meat on a stick – pork or chicken depending on where you are from) from the famous Hakodate Hasegawa Store convenience stores. They are convenience stores like any other but they make fresh yakitori in-shop. Quite nice indeed. We met up with friends, enjoyed the night time flowers and returned to our rider house for some much needed rest that was only occasionally interrupted by overhead lights flicking on and off, returning bikers or rustling plastic bags.

I woke up in Yakumo around 7am. For the last 5 odd years Ive always had a bad back that makes itself known in the early hours of the morning.  Usually the pain gets so bad I am forced up and out of bed sooner then I might normally choose.  And indeed it forced me out of bed this morning.  As such I went for a little walk around the campsite, finding a quiet spot on a boardwalk over a tiny lake on which to do a little morning stretching and yoga. After some time Christophe came and found me and we headed back to the tent for breakfast- a wonderful meal of last nights yakisoba with added scrambled eggs, a fried egg each and a piece of toast each. Full of good food and packed up we said goodbye to the nice campjo people, took one last look at the amazing playground (which I assume christophe mentioned in yesterdays post- if not I will make its own little post on it soon) and hit the road.

The ride was smooth, only gradual ups or downs, right along the ocean and sunny. Just perfect conditions. We had gone 30km in half the time of yesterday, ¼ the time of the day before that.  I don’t think this was because I am getting stronger from now being on the road for 3 days, but rather becase the conditions were so good.  Most of the way we could spy lovely Mount Komagotake, a nice addition to the ocean view.

We broke for lunch at the Mori Michi No Eki (review: michi no eki = japanese rest stops, way nicer then the American counterpart) where there was a great little festival going on. There we enjoyed some prune curry, fried scallops, grilled squid, and crab rice- all delicious and cheap. We also met a very nice Japanese man from Yokohama who invited us to visit him when we do our all Japan ride.  As he gave us his business card we realized we really need to make a set of cards to give to people who we meet riding.  The business card culture in Japan is huge, its very important her to offer up a card to someone you meet, and young workers are taught to take notes about the first encounter on the card so that they will better remeber the person in the future (I had a lesson on this as part of my oreintation at Kaisei).  We also met a guy from Canada, Donnie,  who is doing a Charity ride from Tokyo to Sapporo (scroll through and you’ll see a pic of christophe and I).  He had gotten as far as Mori in only 9 days!  He told us he started off with 10 other guys, but now it was only him, made me feel a little better as I thought to myself “there is no way I could do that”.

Refreshed and still full of energy we left for Lake Onuma. The ride had a good bit of uphill, but nothing compared to our first day. Unlike our first day, when I continually promised myself each hill would be the last, this time I kept telling myself there would only be another. So when I was tired at all, I would pause for a second and sip some water. When the ride would go down I would enjoy it, all the while expecting it to go back up but not afraid that it would. And when it didn’t and we were already at our destination, I was happy.

This lake is very beautiful, big and scenic. I cant say it is prettier then Lake Toya, but I would say it is better facilitated. The camp site we are at right now is on the lake and very spacious. We stopped at the little town on the lake to pick up supplies and enjoyed a delicious pasta of eggplant, spinach, maitake mushrooms (so so good) and garlic- along with several beers. Enjoying our beers after setting up the tent we chatted about how nice today was. We decided our biggest mistake on this trip was trying to plan everything. Today there was no goal point, just some general ideas. Lunch came when we were hungry- not when we got to a certain place. It was better like this. We stopped at some fun spots like the michi no eki, a giant melon and an amazing octopus shop (which I will let christophe tell you about tomorrow). And now we are at Onuma, where we hadnt even planned to stop in the beginning. All the places we have stayed at have been amazing, but our plans would never have taken us to them- so the new plan is no plan. Have an idea of what there is, and then see what happens (and never let a camp site be more the 50K away)

So life is good, my spirit is happy and my belly is full- time for bed. Tomorrow its down to Hakkodate for Hanami!! (Hanami = the traditional Japanese activity of eating and drinking under cherry blossom trees).

After breakfast, we took a final, quick bath in the “family bath” which had two, separate doors for men and women which both lead to the same changing room. As with the main bath, the family bath was still a scalding 49.5 degrees Celsius. For comparison, most baths are 40 to 43.

After the bath, we paid, collected our complimentary lighter/flashlight and started to pack our bags. One of the onsen workers (who I am assuming is the son of the owner – a family business) came hoe from what I’m assuming was a jog. A very large, most likely obese yellow lab waddled beside him. We got into a very nice conversation with him about all sorts of things, he invited us to stay with him on our way back through, and we finally headed off.

The ride from Oshamanbe bay was a world better than our previous days torture. The headwind was still there, although it either was little weaker or we were a bit stronger or in higher spirits. We chugged along until we got to Harvester at Yakumo, our lunch destination, a little after 1:30. The final hill up to Harvester (a restaurant I’m sure I’ve written about before) was tough – not so much because of the grade but because the chicken couldn’t come soon enough. We did, eventually, make it. We did order chickens of many kinds, a delicious seafood pizza and some (real) salads. We were satisfied. The icing on the cake was that it was turning out to be a completely beautiful day that showed no signs of going rainy as weather prediction sites had told us. We decided that 40km was enough for a day, pedaled over to the nearby campsite (Yakumo Autocamp – which is a really nice, although slightly overpriced camp site), setup camp and made a delicious dinner of yakisoba and sausages.

Oh, I forgot to mention, since we got to camp pretty early, we had some time to walk around the grounds (which turned out to include a park golf course and a playground). The playground there was absolutely, shockingly awesome. Pictures don’t do it justice. I know this is a running theme in a lot of my posts (to our other blog) but America, you need to relax with the lawsuits and let kids have fun. A playground like this would most likely not be passable in the US. It’s really a shame because I don’t legitimately giggle like a schoolgirl about of sheer enjoyment very often, but I did here. And as I did so, I instantly thought about all the poor, American kids who were missing out on this fun because some kids with a scraped knee’s over protective parent who just NEEDS to sue someone.

We enjoyed some dinner, also enjoyed a Choco-Pie, and called it a night – falling asleep on our machine flattened, evenly sodded camp site.

We are currently camping at a very nice although mildly overpriced camp ground in Yakumo – about 70km from Hakodate. We’re going a good deal slower than planned but that’s fine. We’re learning. Hopefully we’ll find some interwebs tomorrow. -cr

It started off alright. We left the house about an hour after planned- leaving at 10am. But mostly unconcerned we jumped on our bikes to enjoy what looked like a beautiful day. It was a bit weird getting used to the weight on the bike which was intensified by the crazy winds that we get in Muroran. When a truck would pass you would have to fight the tail winds that came after it, while simultaneously fighting the wind blowing you in toward the road. But we made it to Sakimori Wharf in only about 10 minutes longer then it normally takes us (30 min), and we set up next to the ocean for our morning stretch.

The next part of the ride, through Date, is something we have done often and it was uneventful. The sun was shining, the wind down, perfect for riding. After Date comes Abuta, which is preceded by a bit of a hill, but we both took it with surprising ease and were unperturbed by the second unexpected hill before Aputa (the town next to Abuta… Japanese people love to be confusing). At Aputa we stopped at the michi no eki- which is basically a rest stop but way better. The michi no ekis are beautiful buildings, sometimes with parks, that usually have local produce for sale and a restaurant that does local specialties. We decided to take a break and enjoy some guru-maki sausage and some hotate (scallops) kushiyaki (grilled on a skewer)- both delicious.

We were a bit behind schedule, it was almost 12:45 when we had imagined we would be approaching Oshamanbe (still 50ish km away) so we enjoyed the food and then got underway. Again we were met by an unexpected hill, but we fought our way up it. This is where things took a turn for the worse. After that hill came another, then another, then a slow and steady climb through a mountain range. I kid you not when I say we went uphill almost non-stop for near around 20km. I was exhausted; there were no rest stops/convenience stores. Nothing. And the hills just kept growing in front of us. Not crazy steep hills, long unending winding upwards slopes (with the odd downhill christophe is reminding me of now, but it felt like all uphill). We got off and walked at multiple points when we were just too tired. We biked through tunnels. We stopped talking to each other because we were each beginning to fall into private states of insanity. Then finally, around 5pm, we reached the end of the hills. We had been biking uphill for 4 hours and with great joy we raced down the other side, pausing to snap a picture as we entered the Oshamanbe area.

To our joy at the end of the downhill we reached a sign that read “Oshamanbe center 15 km” and we looked ahead at a long flat ride. Assuming we would be there well within the hour, we happily chose an Oshamanbe camp site and started talking about what we would get for dinner. Then we started biking, and the most insane headwind you can imagine fought us each inch of the way. On a completely flat rode I was averaging 8km a mile. I began to believe Oshamanbe did not even exist. Down this long flat road I saw no signs of life, just the odd car passing. The last time I had eaten was an apple at the top of one of the hills around 2pm. My body was drained of everything. I was totally, mentally fried after all the hills, and I literally began to lose my sense of self as I pumped at my pedals and made no visible progress. At the first vending machine, after about an hour of flat riding and about 10 km, we stopped. I lost it and collapsed on the grass sobbing about how I didn’t ever want to ride a bicycle again. Amazingly, Christophe had nothing but agreement for me. I then passed out mid sob for maybe 5 min, woke up, and drank a grape Fanta from the vending machine. With a little more sugar in our systems we decided we were crashing in Oshamanbe and we were not camping. We would do the only logical thing there was to do- go to an onsen hotel.

Amazingly we were at the Oshamanbe Onsen Hotel not 10 minutes later- joking about the amazing kitsch of the place (there are maybe 200 small statues just outside the door). A little family-run place, we happily followed the ladies upstairs to a big double room, accepted some seriously starched yukatas (robes) and fled to the onsen. The onsen was insanely hot (I later found out the temperature of the water is 49.5 C!!) but I just didn’t care. After, we came back up to the room and hung out while we waited for our dinner to be brought to us. Then dinner arrived.

Dinner was ridiculous. I will now recommend this hotel to anyone I ever speak to again who may be heading through Oshamanbe, because dinner is simply wonderful. Our hostess came up with a tray filled with sashimi (uni, tuna, clam), tsukemono (japanese pickles), a fish dish and mountain vegetables. Happily we accepted this, only for her to raise the tray and expose another layer which included two more veggie side dishes, a crab rice dish famous in this area and 4 table grill things. She then left and returned with a crab miso soup for one burner and a seafood egg drop soup for the other (each!), a plate with tempura salmon and big fried shrimp, a grilled scallop and a strawberry. But the most amazing part- when she lifted this tray, she revealed two, big plates with two, full kegani (horse crabs) each. Horse crabs are hairy and very big. Two is more then I could eat if that was all I had to eat. But each of us had our own set of everything described above- the entire table was covered, it was insane.

I am now nearing a food coma so I will end this post. Somewhere in the middle of dinner Christophe mentioned that it might not be such a bad thing to have a few bad days on the big, all-Japan trip, because treating ourselves to an onsen hotel was the best idea we could have had. All in all I am happy to crawl into bed and take it much much easier tomorrow.

We’ll hopefully be updating the location map and posting journal entries as often as we have internet but seeing as WiFi is pretty scarce in Japan, it may be difficult.

Alright – panniers packed, bikes maintenanceded and weather looking nice. Time for sleep!

Oh, and the site is still very much under construction so expect many things to change as we figure things out.