hokkaido
today i traveled to hakodate, a city just across the gap between japan’s main island of honshu and its northern island of hokkaido.
i took two last photos of aomori out my hotel room window to say goodbye before leaving this city forever.
under the sea
not too much to talk about with the travel here. i took a train from aomori straight to hakodate. there was one cool thing though:
to get from the main island to hokkaido, the bullet train goes through an undersea tunnel that is 58.5 km (~37 miles) long. the tunnel is 240 meters (787 feet) below sea level at its lowest point. i’ve traveled in a train underwater now.
ok but what do i do here
in complete contrast to my experience in aomori, hakodate feels beautiful and energetic.
i got to the hotel about an hour and a half too early. thankfully, they let me store my luggage there before checkin, and i went looking for lunch. the hotel staff told me there is an excellent sushi restaurant about 5 minutes away on foot, so i headed there. unfortunately, there was a line of about 10 people waiting outside, and i didn’t want to deal with that. so i pivoted to a different restaurant right next door. it is a “family restaurant” or “famiresu”, a common type of restaurant in japan that i would say is most analagous to like, dennys. but they serve all kinds of food, not just breakfast. they are generally pretty cheap, and the food is decent. this was one of the big chain family restaurants, called saizeriya.
there was zero wait, and i kinda understand why. i ordered spaghetti and some garlic butter focacia.
i think it really speaks to the quality of the average meal in japan that this perfectly edible and inoffensive meal was probably the worst meal i’ve ever had in japan. it wasn’t bad at all, but it was definitely boring and low quality. it was also only 800 yen ($5.04). i’m certainly not mad about it. could have waited like an hour for excellent sushi though.
going up another mountain
after checking into my hotel and setting all my bags down, i hit the classic “things to do in _____” that i do every time i arrive in a new city i haven’t been to before.
the first result was that there is a super popular ropeway up the nearest mountain, appropriately named mt. hakodate. i also learned that michelin gives stars to things that aren’t restaurants. because apparently this ropeway has “3 michelin stars in the ‘michelin green guide japan’”. so i figured i had to go to this. the official website for this ropeway says that it is best viewed at night.
i figured there would be 1 million people there at night (i was right), but that i also wanted to see it at night. so i went up there a bit before sunset to catch both views.
i should have thought about it for a second before leaving the hotel, but it was reeeeeally cold up here. hokkaido’s like, whole thing is being japan’s freezing north. and i was up on top of a mountain with nothing to block the wind. and today was a verrrry windy day.
dinner
so i didn’t stick around at this lookout for too long. i headed back inside to the ropeway station / gift shop / restaurant area thing, and found a restaurant where i ordered extremely overpriced “““wagyu””” but got to sit in a warm room while i ate it.
i am calling this extremely overpriced, but not because it was bad. it was extremely delicious. the problem is that it was $50 for like 4 or 5 bites of meat.
after that quick dinner, the sun began to set and i went back out into the frigid cold to try and get some night photos.
the death of human society
so, i was complaining to some friends about this the other day, but having spent time at a huge percentage of “the big tourist spots” in this country, i have observed a phenomenon that makes me feel like i am the only real human being and everyone else is a soulless husk going through the motions to imitate life.
i don’t know what to call it, but i see people enter into a place with a beautiful view, immediately pull out their phone, take their instagram photo or a selfie with the beautiful thing in the background or whatever, and then leave. literally 0 time spent actually observing or participating in the beautiful thing or learning anything about it at all. i saw it a ton in yamadera the other day. i saw a couple people that were literally on their phone taking selfies for 100% of their time at the top of the mountain.
every time i am within 100 nautical miles of a cherry blossom tree, i am also sure to see a couple taking a “hey get a picture of me looking mysteriously at the cherry blossoms” photo.
i try not to be too judgmental of other people i haven’t met. and i understand that i am also going to these same places and taking photos just like they are. but there is something so soulless about the way i see people doing it. its like they specifically only came on a vacation to japan to bolster their instagram portfolio. i don’t know. it makes me sad. it just feels like social media / the modern age has made people so performative and fake.
all of this to say, there were 1 million people here to take photos of this view at night, and it kind of turned me off of the idea of trying to get very many photos of it. i stuck around for a bit, but i ended up leaving pretty soon after seeing this.
i did capture what might be my magnum opus during this though.
i was hesitant to write any of this section, because it makes me feel sort of hypocritical. and it doesn’t do any good to complain about the behavior of others.
i can acknowledge that i also came up here for the same reason they did, to see a beautiful view of a city on the other side of the world and get some photos of it. but the volume of people i saw walk out onto this viewing platform, smash themselves into this giant crowd of people, take a photo, and then turn around and immediately leave without even taking a moment to, i don’t know, see the view or something, felt insane. maybe i’m losing my mind.
losing my mind
these last couple posts have been quite negative in tone. i didn’t really want it to be like that. but i feel like the whole point of this blog is to document my experience with traveling to japan. in theory, future blog posts will be less pessimistic. if not only because i will probably not be going to many more super touristy attractions for the remainder of my trip.
i think i am losing my creative energy. its probably a bit abnormal to take trips this long, and i think i should maybe have listened to my own statement at the end of last trip and done a few less days. or just less cities overall. its possible i am burning myself out a little. or maybe the depressing experience i had in aomori just hasn’t fully rubbed off yet.
regardless, i am enjoying this trip quite a bit and am glad to be here. i think future blog posts will probably improve in tone. apologies if this one bummed ya out.
i got one last photo out of my hotel room window. finally, a place i can actually use the tripod!
