Hakodate - Japan

The symbol for Hakodate was the squid.  In the morning fish market, there was a ton of it! Plus a huge range of squid related souveniers.  It was a shame we couldn’t support the market and buy some fresh fish.  They did have dried scallops which I had never seen before though, and we bought some of those (which would keep during the journey).

What do you know! We were far enough north in Japan not to have missed the cherry blossoms after all!

We took a cable car up the mountain of Hakodate and what you see below is the view of the city.  Notice how it is very narrow in the centre.  The town itself is not that pretty and gave a better view of a less touristy place that is focused on industry.

We took the trail down the mountain and it took just over an hour to walk down and the nature was just lovely.  Below is a bunch of super cute school kids who kept saying to us “hello, hello, hello!!!”

Hakodate was really not all pretty, as I said, but showed us a good contrast.  The super manicured and the "not so nice" part of town.

This photo below captures a memorable moment.  We were walking along and encountered this man surrounded by huge crows.  He presumably was feeding them.  He kept smiling at us and motioning to us.  Eventually we discovered what he wanted:  We were so unusual in his everyday experience that he wanted to take our picture.  In the end, he photographed us with his camera and we did the same.  All done in broken English, Japanese and miming!