On Tuesday morning the family assembled for a long three train journey to Hokkaido.
At our first destination, Hakodate, we visited the cape just as the sun started to set behind Mt. Hakodate.
I disappeared to take this picture as the cabs waited for us. I could hear Sam yelling for me, but she couldn’t see me. A few minutes later the rest of the Fam realized what the view looked like on the western side of the cape and ran over as I was hurrying back.
We had dinner at a fancy local restaurant with lots of great food (but few customers) then took a cab (because the ropeway was closed for renovation) to the Mt. Hakodate Observatory on top of the mountain.
The wind rushed around the top swiftly enough to discourage the Fam from staying too long. They went back to the cabs and back to the hotel while I stayed and tried to get some stabilized shots. As throngs of teenagers arrived on buses and rattled the rails my gorrilapod was affixed to I realized that long exposures weren’t going to happen here and took the public bus back to the hotel.
The first instinct for teenagers in Japan when reaching the observatory is to yell as if they’ve been stabbed in the back. I wonder if they’re conversely silent at sporting events and think WE’RE the weird ones.
The next morning, before catching our train to Noboribetsu, we walked to the Hakodate Asaichi for breakfast, focusing on super fresh crab and the most delicious salmon/tuna in the world.
Mmmm, that’s good salmon.Buy here! My fresh unmodified product is different than the other twenty fresh crab sellers on the same block that buy from the same fishermen! (note the eye-rolling daughter inside that can’t wait to get out of this little redneck town and do something in the big city, not gonna be the latest fish monger in a long line of… actually I have no idea if they’re related and might I might be projecting a bit…never mind!)
We also tried squid ink ice cream, which didn’t really taste like much of anything.
Friday morning we shut down the house and headed to LAX. Despite a disorganized boarding queueing procedure from Air Canada, the actual flight was not full and we ended up with an empty seat next to us. However, the flight was delayed for about a half hour due to a “maintenance procedure” that prolonged our […]
I posted a bit ago about how we’d gone back to Shaw’s Cove for the first time in five years. Part of that was because we’d visited La Jolla Shores on one day down and back trips in 2020 and 2021. Then no swimming at all anywhere in 2022 or 2023. So while it had […]
A month ago we returned to Shaw’s Cove after a 5 year drought to find out that we’d been snorkeling to the wrong side all along. A few coves south lay the Laguna Beach Marine Life Refuge, where most of the juvenile leopard sharks learn to drive. Last time all our friends cancelled on us, […]
