Hakodate walking tour & city guide

From the morning market to the bay

A walk usually starts early at the Hakodate Morning Market, next to the station, where hundreds of stalls sell crab, sea urchin, salmon roe and squid, and small counters serve seafood rice bowls for breakfast. From there the waterfront leads to the Kanemori Red Brick Warehouses, old trading stores turned into shops, cafés and a beer hall along a small canal.

The bay area is pleasant at any time of day, and in winter the warehouses and the trees along the harbour are decorated with lights.

Motomachi and Mount Hakodate

Behind the harbour, the Motomachi district climbs the slopes of Mount Hakodate along wide, steep streets such as Hachiman-zaka, which runs in a straight line down to the sea. Here stand the white-and-green Russian Orthodox Church, a Catholic church and an Anglican church, the pastel Old Public Hall and the former British Consulate. Further on lies a quiet foreign cemetery overlooking the water.

A ropeway runs to the 334-metre summit of Mount Hakodate, where the city lights spread out on a narrow strip of land between two curving bays. In the north-east of the city, Goryokaku is a star-shaped Western-style fort, best seen from its observation tower, especially when its cherry trees bloom.

Visiting tips

The Hokkaido Shinkansen reaches Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto in about 4 hours from Tokyo, with a short connecting train to the city; the limited express from Sapporo takes about 3 hours 40 minutes. Trams link the station, the bay, Motomachi and Goryokaku. Winters are snowy but milder than in Sapporo, and the night view is clearest on cold, dry evenings.