As you stroll from the train station to the hotel, you run across a number of shops opposite from the morning market. One in particualr is this whale meat restaurant. I have not tried whale, dont really plan to either. The japanese have a weird relationship with whaling. They use a loop hole in the law that allows them to hunt whales for research. But Im sure that the captured whales will eventually end up as someone's meal
On a tastier note, I had mentioned about a little yakitori place that we ran across. We ordered a variety of skewers and other dishes. The ones I enjoyed the most were the ones made with duck meat. One was plain minced duck and the other included green onions. Both were awesome and delicious. The meat had a nice texture and did not dry out during the cooking process.
Apparently in this area, pig is more popular than cow. Many of the items that we ordered were from swine such as the pig tongue below. I have had beef tongue and I like it. In comparison, the flavor from this is much more mild and the texture is a bit crunchier. Not as crunchy as chicken cartiledge.
Several things on my list of things to see while we are here includes seeing the star shaped fort called Fort Goryokaku. Since we were doing this the morning we were leaving, there was no time to actually walk the fort ourselves. So, we went to the adjacent tower to take pictures. In a small area, a number of children and people were giggling about and pointing to the floor. the tower is 107 meters tall and theres a glassed in whole that allows you to look straight to the base of the structure. The people were scared to stand on top or even near the glass. Being hte impetuous american, I went over to stand atop the glass and even stomp on it a few times.
Hakodate is located in the southwest tip of the island. Its an oddly shaped penninsula. If you were to cut it off from the rest of Hokkaido, it would look like a 3-pointed shuriken, throwing star.
This is the western side of the city. Much of the tourist attractions are located on this side. Fort Goryokaku, Mt Hakodate, our hotel, brick warehouses, etc. If you look at the boat in the harbor and move your eyes up to almost where the horizon is, you will see the observation tower for the fort just to the right. Right below the observation desk of Mt Hakodate, at the base of the tram, there are a number of historic old temples from religions outside of Japan. These were built by some of the early foreign settlers
