If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Hakodate

Tuesday morning we left for our Hokkaido adventure! The train trip (first part on shinkansen, second part on express train) was comfortable and went by faster than I had expected. We rode from Utsunomiya to Sendai on shinkansen, and then transferred to another shinkansen that's slightly faster that travels to a town called Hachinohe. From there, we traveled by express train to Hakodate. At some points of the trip, we could see the ocean, and the look of the coast along with the general feel and appearance of the landscape started to remind me a little of Oregon.

One of the interesting parts of the train trip was traveling through the Seikan Tunnel that connects Honshu to Hokkaido. Even though it's just a trip through a long tunnel (darkness with lights rushing by along the side of the train as you look out the window), the thought of where we actually were was quite strange. Check the link above to Seikan Tunnel if you want more details, but in brief, it's currently the longest traffic tunnel in the world, and passes under the ocean. The total length of the tunnel is 54 kilometers (33 1/2 miles). It also has the only undersea train station in the world. (The station is infrequently used for passengers-you only stop there if you take a special tour of the facility-but I think it is regularly used for employees.) It was rather strange thinking, "we're traveling on a train under the ocean".

We arrived in Hakodate in the afternoon and checked into our hotel (after a short conversation with a "colorful local character": there was a funny older gentleman riding around on his bicycle talking to people as they left the train station. He asked us where we were going, and he didn't seem to know exactly where our hotel was. He rode away, probably to have a similar conversation with other tourists.) Hakodate is a very beautiful city. Just walking around the historical area and reading the information signs was interesting. There is an area on a hill that overlooks the city and the ocean where there are several historic churches. When I get home, I will add pictures of that area. There is also an aerial tram that goes up to a much higher part of the small mountain, but it was so foggy both of the days that we were there, that we didn't try it. We had a great dinner at another microbrewery, and a good night's sleep.

I'll continue in the next post...