Adventurasia Community

(Originally posted on adventurasia.freezope.org around 2005)

Ikumi and I are now in Hokkaido. We left Tokyo for Hanawa (near Morioka, Akita-ken) Friday evening after work. We spent a couple of days with her family and relatives for ‘Obon’. I believe in Chinese culture there’s a similar event where the ‘ghosts ancestors’ come back ? I remember when I was in Taiwan, there was such a festival…

On Sunday, we visited one of the graves at 7:00 AM. The tradition in that area is to have a picnic with food and alcohol right inside the cemetary ground! Unfortunately, it was raining that day, so the party-goers had to go inside the temple to continue their festivities. On Monday, we headed to Hakodate. We took a bus from Hanawa to Aomori. Then took a 4 hour ferry ride from Aomori to Hakodate. The ferry was pretty good — I think the BC Ferries are much nicer, but I was nevertheless impressed. (I was half expecting from the way Ikumi described it that we’d be lying on the floor with water pipes over us; no windows; and water all over the place… Too much hollywood. ) We checked into our Ryokan (Japanese Inn) and then went to the ‘warehouse area’. It’s somewhat similar to Granville Island + Warehouse area in Yokohama (not sure if you went there). I had ‘black squid ink ice-cream’. It was surprisingly good, and for a few minutes made my mouth black. After that we headed to the famous ‘Mt. Hakodate’ to enjoy the night view. It was quite nice — but very very crowded. It’s unique from other ‘high spots’ in that the land is shaped like a capital ‘H’. After that we went to a local izakaya to enjoy some hakodate specialties — ika somen (squid sliced really fine like noodles) and some sashimi etc.

This morning we woke up early and are heading to the fish market to have sushi breakfast. After that we are going to visit a ship before heading out to Sapporo.

Filed under: Japan