Musings

Motomachi is the port-side district in Hakodate that looks most un-Japanese. The area is extremely popular with visitors, but possibly in part because there were varying degrees of snowfall for the afternoon, the area wasn’t as crowded as other spots

Our last substantial day of visitations this trip, before we make our way back to New Chitose Airport tomorrow for the flight back to Tokyo, and the day after that, the SQ flight back home. We found this place –

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

Day 12 and we’re headed to the last leg of our trip – the port city of Hakodate. Our original plan was to spend a night in this city, but now that we’d added an additional night, we have quite

Whoops. Why were we visiting a cemetery…? Well, for starters, this was the only other place of interest to us in the area, so we included the place – ostensibly as an ‘optional’ place to visit after Takino Suzuran Hillside

There were two large revisions we made to our Japan Dec 2019 itinerary in the months of planning from July onwards. Firstly, we decided not to do a round city-by-city loop from Tokyo and opted instead to spend a substantial

While Nakajima Park was always on our itinerary for Day 10 morning, Moerenuma Park wasn’t anywhere on our itinerary initially. The park isn’t in Sapporo Central but on the outskirts, though accessible by Bus 76 from Kitasanjuyojo Station, with the

The last nine days have seen us getting up really early every morning – for the adults, it’s been as early as 5:30 AM – and routinely returning back to the hotel at 8 PM or later. The kids have

Otaru is a lovely town, and we’re glad we set aside a full day to check out the place’s sights. The highlight for the kids again was the copious amount of snowfall, and of the lovely powdery type. Day 09’s

We left the Otaru Aquarium after the penguin walk in time to catch the 11:45AM-ish bus ride back into Otaru Central, stopping by the Victoria Station steakhouse for lunch. After that, it was a leisurely walk – in snowfall but

Sankaku Market done; the next place on the itinerary was Otaru Aquarium where we’d spend the rest of the morning. We swung back to the bus terminal, looked for station counter 3, and boarded bus 11. The Otaru Aquarium Pass