A port town on a narrow waist of land, with a night view from the hill behind it and a fish market that is best at seven in the morning.
Hakodate is at the southern tip of Hokkaido, the first city you reach coming up from Honshu. It was one of the first ports in Japan opened to foreign trade, and the slopes above the harbour still have the churches, brick warehouses and wooden houses that came with that.
Because the town sits on a narrow waist between two bays, the view from Mt. Hakodate behind it is an unusual shape — the lights narrow to a bright band between two areas of black water. It is reached by ropeway in three minutes, and it is counted among the best night views in Japan.
The practical thing to know: the ropeway queue in summer is long, and the half hour after sunset is when everyone wants to be up there. Go up about an hour before sunset, watch the light change, and come down while the queue is still going the other way. There is also a bus, and a road (closed to private cars in the evening in season).
Evening one: the brick warehouses on the waterfront,
then up the hill an hour before sunset for the view.
Morning two: the fish market at breakfast — squid, crab, and rice bowls of
salmon roe and sea urchin, eaten at 07:00 because that is when it is best.
Then: the star-shaped fort, and salt ramen for lunch before you move on.
For about twenty minutes after the sun has gone, the sky is still deep blue while the town lights are already on. The bright band of the town and the two black bays on either side are both visible at once — and that is the shape people come here for.
Wait until it is fully dark and you lose the water. The lights stay, but the sea disappears into black and the outline goes with it. Most visitors arrive for “the night view” and reach the top after that has already happened.
Go up about an hour before sunset. You get a seat at the rail, you watch the whole change, and you come down while the queue is still going up.
The market beside the station is at its best at breakfast, not at lunch. Bowls of rice topped with salmon roe, crab and sea urchin, eaten standing or at a counter, at an hour when most travellers are still in a hotel dining room.
The squid here is famous because it is landed locally and served the same morning. Some stalls will let you catch your own from a tank and prepare it in front of you — whether that appeals is up to you, and nobody will push it.
Go before eight. By ten the best of it has been sold and the coach parties have arrived — they move with the catch, and asking first is normal here.
These two are the reason to give Hakodate a night rather than an afternoon. Both happen at the ends of the day, and a traveller passing straight through to Sapporo will miss both of them.
The night view, by three-minute ropeway. Go up an hour before sunset rather than after it.
Crab, squid and rice bowls of roe and sea urchin, beside the station. Open from about 05:00 and best before 08:00.
Nineteenth-century harbour warehouses, now shops and cafes, lit along the water at night.
A star-shaped fort from 1864, seen properly only from the tower beside it. About 1,600 cherry trees inside the walls in early May.
Steep streets of churches and wooden houses above the harbour, each slope framing the sea at the bottom of it.
Hakodate’s version is clear and salt-based rather than miso or soy — the lightest of the three Hokkaido styles.
A place can be better known than the prefecture it sits in. Use the prefecture pages below to work out where to eat, where to stay, how to get around and who to call.
