Hakodate

Sorry for the lack of new posts. I'll explain later.

My wife and I went to Hakodate to see a concert and spend a day or so sight seeing. Hakodate is a nice seaside city on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido and we were lucky to be there for some beautiful autumn weather prior to the beginning of Hokkaido's horrifically cold winter weather.

The concert was Japanese shamisen music performed by an artist called Agatsuma. We loved it! He's great, playing a traditional Japanese instrument that looks like a banjo of sorts but he can play beautiful modern sounding music. Buy a CD or download to your IPod!

After the show we went to eat sushi at a great sushi restaurant. Hakodate specializes in seafood, especially crab and squid. It was amazingly good. 90% of what we ate was a new and unique (for us) type of sushi dish that we had never tried before. Delicious food in a peaceful setting.

After we ate my wife told the hostess that we needed a taxi. Within less than 5 minutes, we left the restaurant and the taxi was waiting for us. The driver was an older man who told us stories about the city, including the devastating fire from the 1930s that burnt 80% of town. Then, he drove us up to the top of Mount Hakodate which gave us a beautiful overlook of the city at night. This mountain is right on the edge of town and I would guess it is about the same altitude as Mount Tamalpias near San Francisco, maybe a little less high. The driver shut off his meter, walked us out to the best look out spot and took some photos for us. No extra charge.

Try asking a cab driver in America, if he understands English, for a similar treatment.

The train ride from where we live to Hakodate goes about 600 feet below sea level through a roughly 20 mile long tunnel that runs between Japan's main island where we live and Hokkaido. Its an engineering marvel. Just like Boston's big dig, only unlike the Boston tunnel the cement didn't fall off the ceiling and kill anyone right after Japan's tunnel to Hokkaido was built.