Wednesday, 29 October 2025

First day in Hakodate and it’s time to visit Goryokaku Fort. The hotel runs a free tour bus and its first destination of the day is Goryokaku Park (well close to it anyway) so I booked myself on it.

The fort dates to the mid 19th century when a US fleet turned up and demanded that Japan open up trade (sound familiar?). Hakodate was chosen as one of the open ports. The fort was created (out of cannon ball range) to house the magistrate’s office.

hakodate utility cover

Goryokaku Fort was also site of one of the battles during the Japanese Civil War.

information board

Just a few images from inside the fort of the foliage, you knew that was the reason why I went to the fort rather than some historical interest 🙂 There are a lot of cherry trees on site and so it must be quite magical in spring but I got autumnal colours. The pines are supposed to be nice in summer too.

going towards the main gate

trying to show off

The magistrate’s building is a reconstruction (the buildings in the fort were dismantled in 1871).

magistrate’s office

I spy the Goryokaku Tower

nice moat

path through the walls

I don’t understand why there is a direct path from the moat through two layers of walls here but maybe this was a third gate and the bridge is missing.

cut wood

Very interesting tree rings. I have no idea what is going on.

cherry trees

These cherry trees must be spectacular in spring.

showing off

But do they compare to this?

the balls are cute

Must be fun to be a gardener here.

foliage!

fisheye foliage

OK time to visit the tower. No outside observation levels so I was bracing myself for reflections galore but it wasn’t too bad.

towards Mt Hakodate

so cute

Getting some side eye, and finally the fort.

Goryokaku fort

After that I went for a very nice Ramen to warm up.

tasty ramen

Most of the tourists I have seen in Hokkaido have been Japanese. I suspect that Hokkaido doesn’t see many, especially not compared to the Golden Triangle, outside of the skiing season and those tourist probably fly into Sapporo’s airport and take a coach to the ski resorts and never see anything else. The restaurants I have been in have English menus that are offered and pricing is the same as the Japanese menu. The only “drama” I’ve had was a breakfast this morning. First time is always weird because you don’t know the procedure but this one was just not helpful for non Japanese.

I’m staying at a OMO5 run by Hoshino Resorts, like the hotel in Otaru, and they love self service, except it isn’t. Check in is via QR code except the person at the desk wants to do it. As a foreigner they scan my passport too and then they issue me with a standard credit card sized door access card. Assuming it’s the same as Otaru I just tap the card at the end to check out (with them “helping” again). All that is fine but it seems a waste of the technology.

Anyway back to breakfast. I go down and there’s a line, OK maybe bad timing, but it’s a line for a machine to get a ticket. Again there is a person running the ticket machine and you are given a number and get to wait. Now the person running the queue doesn’t appear to speak a language other than Japanese and I can’t count to 85 in Japanese. She does her spiel whenever there is a table open for the queue number and if no one responds then another person who is also taking people to tables calls it in English. That worked for a couple of times but when he wasn’t there then the assumption seemed to be that the non response was because the people had left the queue and it wasn’t retried. Eventually enough people had been processed without me moving that she came over to check my number and then the English speaking guy took me to a table. Maybe tomorrow I will show her my number when I get it. I guess if you didn’t understand Japanese or English you would need to be noticed. Also the number was printed in “European” numbers and not Japanese ones. Anyway end of rant.

I was asked how I purchased my train (and public transport) tickets. Maybe others are interested so here is a round up.

Bus in Wakkanai to Cape Soya was a special return tourist ticket purchased at the bus station which had two tear offs and I just deposited them in the ticket box when I got off the bus. If it wasn’t for that I would have needed to buy regular tickets as it was outside of an IC area.

If you are in an area that has IC cards, the area from Asahikawa through Sapporo to Otaru supports IC cards, then I use the Mobile Suica app on my iPhone. There is an English language version that you can load into Apple wallet. Create a Suica account, load money into the account, and then tap on as you get on the bus (or tram, subway, train) and tap off when you exit and the fare is handled automatically. You get a notification when you tap on and another, with the fare, when you tap off. On Japanese buses/trams you get on at the middle door and off at the front.

In an area without IC cards then you need to buy a ticket. So far I’ve only needed to do that for a train so I use one of the machines at the station to buy a ticket with cash. There is usually a fare board above the machine, look for your destination find the fare and purchase that value of ticket. On buses I believe you take a ticket from the machine as you get on and then pay the fare based on that ticket when you get off. There is a display at the front of the bus that shows the various fares for the current stop. I haven’t needed a ticket so I don’t know what is on it and how to then read the fare display. Buses also have a change machine so you can break a note to get the correct fare. Mobile Suica is just so much easier than this.

For long distance trains, but not Shinkansen, I have been using the JR East web site to order tickets. Firstly you need to create an account with JR East and associate a credit card with it (I’m using Amex but others are accepted). I then login, select the pair of stations, elect to select seats, find a seat I like (most of the trains I’ve been on only have reserved seats) and then order it. I’ll get an email confirmation with a QR code that I can use at a ticketing machine at the station to print my tickets. This may be a different machine to the local tickets in a large station. Here is a ticket machine in Hakodate station.

ticket machine

First switch to English (or Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean).

The English version

Note this one will give you local tickets and for popular stations there is a button for them otherwise a fare but I’m collecting a ticket so I want “Ticket Pick-Up”. Also note all options have an English version as I learned when I wanted a South Hokkaido Railway ticket.

ticket pickup

I could insert the physical card card I used for the purchase but I scanned the QR code in the email JR East sent and it prints two tickets, basic fare ticket and the seat reservation.

Shinkansen is slightly different. Again I use the JR East web site, login and select a station pair, and select a seat but instead of going the QR code route I elect to have it associated with my IC card (there is a discount for using an IC card). The tricky bit it finding out my Suica card number since I have a virtual card and the English language Suica in my Apple wallet won’t tell me. I thought I had got around that problem with an ancient physical PASMO card but on the last purchase JR East decided it was invalid even though they had confirmed previously that it was fine. Anyway Interwebs to the rescue. Download the Japanese Suica app and on the splash page as well as telling me my balance there is a circle with an “i” in it, tap that and I get my SuicaID. Add this magic string to the Shinkansen booking and I should be fine. On Friday I take my first Shinkansen of the trip so we’ll see if it works 🙂

Note the station pairs in the bookings need to be a direct service. If the journey is made up of a number of trains then that is a number of tickets. On Friday I need a Shinkansen ticket and a Limited Express ticket. The Limited Express ticket was the one I picked up tonight.