Hakodate

Last weekend we ventured to the beautiful city of Hakodate. Hakodate lies on the very southern shore of the northern island Hokkaido. To understand what we did in Hakodate you must first have a history lesson: In the late 1800's the Meiji Restoration took place in Japan. Prior to this time Japan had cut off all contact with the world for 270 years (which is also the longest duration of Christian persecution). Hakodate was one of the first ports open to the world during the restoration, so there are many old buildings of the western style.

So our time in Hakodate was spent walking about looking at old buildings from the early nineteen hundreds and taking pictures of them. All of which Travis thought was quite peculiar since his parent's house is older (this year is the 100th anniversary of their house!!) than most of the buildings...but they were in Japan so that makes them cool.

We stayed in a really nice hotel with English service!! We were quite surprised to find that many people talked to us in English, signs were in English, even menus were in english!!

To travel between places we rode on the street cars! Yes, that's right street cars just like in the 1920's San Francisco style. Here's a picture of an old school one.

Supposedly, Hakodate has one of the 3 best views in the world which is the night view of the city from atop the nearby mount Hakodate. It was gorgeous minus the fact that there were hundreds of people crowding around trying to take pictures.

We also went to the top of a tower to check out a star shaped fort characteristic of a Western fort from the mid 1800's. The fort looked cool from the top of the tower, but from the park grounds it was a mess of construction because they are rebuilding parts of the fort buildings.

Here is a picture of the old town hall built in 1910ish. Hakodate is prone to fires which burnt down most of the pre-1900 buildings. But this was a nice house!

Of course Hakodate wouldn't be complete without a bit of tourist shops. These buildings (and more) were filled with tourist shops. You think that American towns are bad, just wait till you see how excited the Japanese are about souvenirs!!

Also during our stay in Hakodate we stayed with Maribeth Voss who is another RCA missionary working as a teacher there. She was super nice allowing us to stay at her place and encouraging us in our efforts here in Japan. Unfortunately we did not get a picture of her to share with you, but she did take this picture of a giant block of parmesan cheese during Angie's birthday dinner.

We really liked Hakodate with its western style and English availability, but we are happy to be back home in Hirosaki.