{"id":9111,"date":"2019-09-11T05:08:53","date_gmt":"2019-09-11T12:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=9111"},"modified":"2021-12-28T21:56:23","modified_gmt":"2021-12-29T05:56:23","slug":"japan-day-8-hakodate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=9111","title":{"rendered":"Japan Day 8: Hakodate"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think I may have mentioned that I gave myself a day to just do nothing and this is the place where you can do nothing. Also, it was raining. Yesterday it was fairly warm at 80\u00b0+ but not that humid, and today it was cold and rainy. I asked someone about this and they said its usually pretty cool here and the weather yesterday was a fluke. Here’s an example from the afternoon.<\/p>\n

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I had breakfast in the hotel because I figured this is a relaxation stop, right?<\/p>\n

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Also, I think the food here is mainly fish but I overdid the fish in Sendai and I wanted to cut back a bit.<\/p>\n

I went north today, toward the five-sided fort Goryokaku. Well, I thought iI was going north-ish towards the park but I was actually pretty darn lost. Remember what I said about liking to wander around Japan? I think I should say I like walking around Tokyo because it’s so dense that there’s all sorts of things to see no matter where you go. Here in Hakata I saw house after house interspersed with some abandoned schools and warehouses. Once in a while there’d be a drug store or a grocery store, but mostly it was houses. I dunno but that was pretty darn dull. The weather was mostly on-and-off drizzle and when I was moving around it was just a bit too warm for my long sleeved shirt. But it was just on the edge.<\/p>\n

In any case, I finally got to the area I was looking for and I really just wanted to sit down. Fortunately there was a Mister Donut there and I spent some time just sitting and drinking coffee. The sweet potato donut was a little too sweet, I think.<\/p>\n

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I never did make it into the fort, but I did go to the observation tower nearby. A couple of Aussies going by told me to definitely go up, and luckily it was fairly clear when I did.<\/p>\n

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When I bought the ticket to go up they gave me a piece of paper that needed three stamps to get a prize. The first stamp was paying to go up the tower. The second was to buy something to eat like, say, a delicious gelato.<\/p>\n

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The third and final stamp was to buy something from the gift shop. I wandered around the shop for quite some time for two reasons. First, I was looking for something cheap. Second, IT STARTED POURING DOWN RAIN.<\/p>\n

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I bought a little trinket to finish out the stamp card and for my trouble I got a plastic paper protector with a picture from the War of Hakodate of 150 years ago.<\/p>\n

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Did I go straight back? Did I just jump in a taxi? No, that wouldn’t be foolish enough. I went walking out in the pouring rain to find a Daiso (the \u00a5100 store) to buy some more cable ties.<\/p>\n

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It was kind of fun because the Daiso was in an old-school department store with old lady clothes. It even had a Bunkyodo bookstore. I tried to take a bus back to the station but I waited half an hour and it never came. I finally took a taxi rather than walk any farther (further?) in the rain. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening watching Rick and Morty, though I did make a return trip to Lucky Pierrot. This time I got the 2nd most popular item, an egg burger (a burger with a fried egg on it) and it was excellent. And what’s with all the guarana drinks in Hokkaido anyway?<\/p>\n

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THat’s it for today, and pretty much it for Hakodate. Tomorrow I’m off to Noboribetsu.<\/p>\n

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Oh, and I liked the Onuma Alt much more than the IPA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think I may have mentioned that I gave myself a day to just do nothing and this is the place where you can do nothing. Also, it was raining. Yesterday it was fairly warm at 80\u00b0+ but not that humid, and today it was cold and rainy. I asked someone about this and they said its usually pretty cool here and the weather yesterday was a fluke. Here’s an example from the afternoon. I had breakfast in the hotel because I figured this is a relaxation stop, right? Also, I think the food here is mainly fish but I overdid the fish in Sendai and I wanted to cut … Continue reading Japan Day 8: Hakodate<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10202,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9111\/revisions\/10202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}