And finally, our last stop for Day 12: going up Mt. Hakodate for what’s regarded as one of Japan’s top three night views of its cities. Nicknamed “Glimmering Jewellery Box”, it sure looks it. The view from this mountain surpasses what I saw at Mt. Moiwa several days back, as there are at least natural features observable from Mt. Hakodate to give pictures some resemblance of theme and patterns.
Whether the view is worth the agony going up though is a different story. The mountain is accessible by a ropeway system, but the viewing platform was extremely crowded. Tour buses full of tourists were coming and arriving every minute, and as there is only a perhaps 20m stretch to see a perspective like this, visitors were cramming – at least four persons deep – towards the fencing. Some visitors were respectful enough to take the pictures/videos they want, then step back to allow those behind them to move forward for their turn. But then again, you have the visitors who want to do their Instagram-type pictures, and with their arms and hands outstretched for their vanity poses and knocking into others.
Best of all, I saw a dude who broke out his professional-sized tripod at the door, with the intent of taking long-exposures I assume. My guess is that if he tried to deploy that with this crowd, he would have had his legs broken – the tripod legs I mean – and tossed overboard!
These pictures here were handheld and shot at between ISO3200 to ISO6400, shutter speeds of 1/50s to 1/80s. RAW files were cleaned up in Lightroom (I’ll do a longer post when I’m back home in Singapore about post-processing images this trip).
That’s a wrap for Day 12. One more substantial day tomorrow of sight-seeing, then it’s headed back to Tokyo, then home.
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