![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/C1Uc9zCw-rotated.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nOur hunger satisfied, we took a walk around the market to see what else we could see.\u00a0 There’s a famous stall with a tank where you can go fishing to catch a squid and have it cooked for you.\u00a0 By 7:30 AM, there was a two hour wait for the privilege.<\/p>\n
Which is interesting, because there were about ten more stalls elsewhere in the area where you could do the same thing with no wait.\u00a0 But I guess the Instagram possibilities just weren’t as good.<\/p>\n
We came across someone selling extremely fresh sea urchin on the half shell, and wanted to try that, but after we paid, the vendor pointed to the row of urchin and indicated we should choose one. Now, I don’t know what makes a good sea urchin, but I DO know the word for “you pick for me,” and the vendor found that pretty funny, so he gave us this.<\/p>\n
Also, for those who know how much\u00a0uni\u00a0<\/em>generally goes for, I’ll point out that this was ten bucks.<\/p>\n We also watched a crab do its level best to scuttle away from a vendor, so that was fun.<\/p>\n Once we finished poking around the market, we hopped on a bus out to the Gory\u014dkaku Fort, which is a fortification constructed towards the end of the Tokugawa shogunate.\u00a0 During the Meiji restoration, it was occupied by rebels intent on resisting the new power structure, but they were defeated and the buildings were destroyed.<\/p>\n However, in the early 2000s, it was decided to rebuilt the magistrate’s house as a museum and historical exhibit.\u00a0 Seems like it would have been simpler to just leave it up, but what do I know?<\/p>\n One point I want to make here.\u00a0 If you read the blog from our last trip to Japan, it was\u00a0extremely<\/em> preoccupied with how ungodly hot the weather was.\u00a0 Hokkaido in August is not<\/em> as hot as Tokyo or Kansai in August.<\/p>\n But it IS hot.\u00a0 We spent the morning wandering around outside at this fort and inside the museum, and we DID get pretty tired and sweaty.\u00a0 So we decamped to the base of that observation tower in the prior picture to recover, drink a strawberry milk, and think about lunch.\u00a0 (Hokkaido is REALLY serious about milk, and there’s milk drinks and ice cream\u00a0everywhere\u00a0<\/em>as a result.)<\/p>\n While we drank our milk, I pulled out Tablelog, the Japanese website that’s like Yelp or Google reviews, but with the critical difference that it doesn’t suck.\u00a0 Turns out there was a very highly regarded sushi restaurant… directly above us?\u00a0 OK, well, why not?\u00a0 We’re in a seaport town, why not fish for breakfast AND lunch?<\/p>\n And on stepping into the restaurant we decided we had definitely made a good choice, after they ushered us to our private cubicle.<\/p>\n Across the street from the fort was a museum that sounded worth a look, which had a general collection of contemporary Japanese art and a calligraphy collection.\u00a0 Or at least, that’s how it was described online.\u00a0 Turns out the calligraphy collection was a single room, and the modern art collection had been displaced for a TeamLab exhibition.\u00a0 But that’s OK, as it turns out.<\/p>\n The calligraphy exhibition was tough, in that it’s hard to appreciate text art for a language you can’t read.\u00a0 But one piece in particular really stuck out to us:<\/p>\n “A field of rapeseed blossoms It’s exceptionally striking how the calligrapher deliberately mimicked the structure of a field of flowers while writing out the poem.<\/p>\n I only wish we had the tools to appreciate the doubtless comparable effects in the rest of the exhibit with more complex texts.<\/p>\n After we devoted all the appreciation we could to the calligraphy room, we moved over to the TeamLab exhibit in the next gallery.\u00a0 It was… fine.\u00a0 Definitely nowhere near as elaborate as the exhibition we visited in Tokyo.\u00a0 Basically a single room of stuff almost entirely aimed at small children.\u00a0 But we had fun coloring in a turtle and a jellyfish and then watching them swim around on the wall.<\/p>\n Deciding NOT to visit the adjacent fishing museum, which was apparently also entirely in Japanese, we instead stopped at a small cat-themed cafe for a snack before heading across town to go for a nice walk.<\/p>\n After a lovely hike, where we stopped to grab a geocache or two, we stopped back at a cafe right on the coastline for some crepes.\u00a0 Check out this view from our table: When we finished the sashimi, they came and collected the tentacles and deep fried them for us.<\/p>\n My notes indicate that we also had some fried corn, clams in sake, fried cheese balls, fried octopus, a whole oyster, “plenty of crab” salad, and a couple of whisky sours.<\/p>\n Whew.\u00a0 What a day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hakodate’s most famous tourist attraction is the morning market.\u00a0 It’s larger than the Nijo market in Sapporo, and much closer to the ocean.\u00a0 It is divided into three areas, one of which is a whole street of functionally identical restaurants … Continue reading <\/a>
\nSo this was either a really good one that he picked because he found us entertaining, or a\u00a0terrible<\/em> one he realized he could foist off on the idiot Canadians.\u00a0 Based on the flavour, which was delicious, I’m guessing the former.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nA very impressive structure, nonetheless.
\n<\/a>
\nThe actual grounds of the fort were also well worth exploring.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nLet’s zoom in on that sashimi platter, shall we? (And also move back in time to before we ate the sashimi.)
\n<\/a>
\nI would like to point out that the WHOLE GODDAM FISH at the upper left of this platter is\u00a0entirely there for garnish.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Pretty slick.\u00a0 The platter also included squid, because that’s Hakodate’s thing, and in addition, we decided to try a local specialty of semi-frozen squid marinated in its own liver.
\n<\/a>
\nIt was… interesting.\u00a0 Probably won’t be ordering it again, though.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nThis is a poem by a Japanese poet named Yamamura Bocho.\u00a0 The text of the poem is<\/p>\n
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms
\nA faint wheat flute
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms
\nThe chattering of a lark
\nA field of rapeseed blossoms”<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nSpecifically, we walked all the way out to a park at the very tip of the peninsula, where we could see the main Japanese island of Honshu in the distance.\u00a0 \u00a0Also more squid.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nStill not the final squid of the day, either.<\/p>\n
\n<\/a>
\nThis looks vaguely magical realist to me, although I couldn’t tell you why.\u00a0 After this, we headed into town to kill time until the dinner reservations the hotel had been nice enough to make for us.\u00a0 While we were at it, we spotted this art, which may or may not be magical.\u00a0 Definitely not realist, though.
\n<\/a>
\nI mentioned dinner reservations.\u00a0 Reddit and Tablelog had suggested that we might like to try an izakaya called Izakaya Daimonten, known for, among other things, live squid sashimi.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nAt the time we placed the order, this entire squid was still swimming around.\u00a0 The bit on the left was sliced up and delicious.\u00a0 The bit on the right was… still twitching. Rather a lot.<\/p>\n