Wednesday, 31 October 2012
The day kicked off with the close to regulation reasonably early (8:24 isn’t up there with the sparrows at first light but it isn’t exactly late either) departure from a station that the cool clear light of day showed to be right beside Aomori’s waterfront. There was a ferry that transports cars and passengers (presumably) to Hokkaido visible from the footbridge en route to Platform 6).
On the northern tip of Honshu, facing Hokkaido across the Tsugaru Strait, Aomori Prefecture has a number of tourist attractions, most of them nature related, though historic ruins including Sannai-Maruyama (Japan's largest, said to date back to 4,000 to 5,000 BC), Korekawa and Kamegaoka would have their share of appeal to the interested observer and Hirosaki Castle is a well-known cherry blossom venue.
Given our schedule (arriving around seven-twenty in the evening, off to take the tunnel under the Tsugaru Strait before eight-thirty the following morning), however, we were never going to be doing much looking around.
The city is a relatively recent development, dating back to the Edo period, when the Hirosaki clan began building a seaport and used woods nearby as landmarks for inward-bound shipping. The name
Aomori either translates as
blue or
green forest and the name did not come into common use until after 1783 though there’s a counter theory that attributes it to an Ainu word, but there’s no doubt the town was an important stepping stone in the Japanese colonisation of Hokkaido.
As indicated, human occupation of the area goes back a ways, and it was part of the region ruled from Hiraizumi by the Northern Fujiwara clan during the Heian period, although it was still largely inhabited by the hunting and gathering Emishi people. Around the start of the Edo period, Aomori was a minor port settlement but in the administrative reforms following the Meiji Restoration feudal domains were abolished and replaced with prefectures, a process that brought about the inauguration of Aomori prefecture on 23 September 1871. Aomori, however, wasn’t designated as a city until 1 April 1898.
You can’t help thinking those developments were related to the Japanese aim to bring the whole of the archipelago under Imperial rule and restrict foreign incursions, and within a year of the creation of Aomori Prefecture the Hokkaidō Colonization Office was operating a ferry service from Aomori to Hakodate. Twenty years later the opening of the Tōhoku Main Line connected the area with Tokyo by rail. The line we’d used to reach the city is slightly more recent, dating back to 1908.
Modern Aomori owes much of its status (apart from the lurks and perks associated with being the prefectural capital) to its position at the terminus of those two rail lines and role as the port for the Seikan Ferry line, which opened in 1908, sailed between Aomori and Hakodate nearly three-quarters of a million times, carrying 160 million passengers until the Seikan Tunnel, the longest tunnel of its kind in the world, came into service.
The Tōhoku Expressway connected Aomori to Tokyo by highway in 1979 and the city is currently the northern terminus of Japan's
Shinkansen service, though that will change in the not too distant future when the new bullet train line goes in under the Tsugaru Strait. We saw fairly obvious signs that construction of that line is well and truly under way.
Sighting the ferry on the way to the morning train was a reminder of those matters...
From Aomori the line more or less followed the coast, with views across the water to Hokkaido, though what I first thought to be the northern island turned out, on closer inspection, to be the northeastern arm of Honshu. Blue sky, bright sunshine meant it was sunglasses weather, not exactly conducive to typing, but that would be caught upon the half hour haul under the Tsugaru Strait.
We were running right beside the beach as we came into Kanita, and there was a lengthier than usual delay due to
problems on the other side. From Kanita the line started to move inland, with deep green forests on either side and broad swathes of multicoloured leaves interspersed among the evergreens, though there were paddy fields closer to the line itself.
By 9:03 we were starting to run into tunnels, the first of them relatively short, and by 9:05 we’d reached a longer one, emerging again by 9:08, when we were supposed to be hitting the big one. The train came to a halt at Tsugaru Hamana, and when we were underway again, with water clearly visible on the left at 9:11 we were in another tunnel, not quite the one that meant our next sighting of daylight would've on Hokkaido, and there were more as we made our way under coastal ridges running down to the sea, which was still over there on our left.
The false alarms meant I wasn't sure whether the tunnel we hit at 9:14 was the big one, but given the fact that we were still hurtling through the darkness two minutes later, I guess it was.
We were supposed to hit the bottom at 9:22, two hundred and forty metres down in a tunnel ten metres wide and eight metres high,though there was no way of assessing dimensions in the Stygian gloom outside. It was a major engineering feat, some forty-two years in the making.
At 9:40 we were onto Hokkaido, emerging with a heavily wooded hillside area on our left as the train pulled into the station at Shiriuchi. We were back in a tunnel shortly thereafter, presumably prompted by the same engineering concerns that applied on the other side.
We were on the eastern side of the train, so it was definitely sunglasses weather as we passed what definitely looked like the in progress construction of the Hokkaido
Shinkansen line, the water in the Strait was like a mill pond and it was a case of sitting back and enjoying the view for the rest of the journey.
The last stage took us on a sweeping loop around the harbour that brought Hakodate to prominence, so at this point I guess it's time for another little diversion into the world of historical and geographical background.
As the first city whose port was opened to foreign trade in 1854, Hakodate used to be the most important port in northern Japan and the largest city in Hokkaido before the Great Hakodate Fire of 1934. The city now runs third behind Sapporo and Asahikawa.
Hakodate's origins date back to 1454, when Kono Kaganokami Masamichi built a manor house in an Ainu fishing village called Usukeshi (the word for
bay in Ainu). We're talking frontier lifestyle and issues with the indigenous people here, and an Ainu rebellion drove Masamichi's son, Kono Suemichi, and family out of Hakodate in 1512.
There isn't much in the way of recorded history for the next century with recurrent low level conflict between the Ainu and armed merchants like the Kono family, who set out to establish trading posts and control trade in the region. Given the frontier experience elsewhere you'd tend to assume people weren't interested in keeping records for posterity and you'd guess there wasn't a great deal of official government supervision either.
In any case there was an Ainu uprising led by a warrior called Shakushain between 1669 and 1672, that resulted in defeat and suppression for the Ainu and laid the foundations for modern Hakodate. By the nineteenth century the settlement was flourishing and there was fairly rapid development after, the Tokugawa shogunate took direct control over Hakodate in 1779. A magistracy was established in 1802.
But the big change came in 1854, when a fleet of five U.S. ships surveyed the harbour under the terms of the Convention of Kanagawa, negotiated by Commodore Matthew Perry and the port was completely opened to foreign trade on 2 June 1859 as one of five Japanese points of contact with the outside world. Visitors can see evidence of that status in the Old Foreign Quarter, which hosted several overseas consulates.
On the ground in Hakodate the first priority was, as usual, dropping the Black Monster at the hotel but there were a couple of logistical and administrative details that needed to be attended to. Madam needed to book the next batch of train tickets, and the travelling funds needed to be replenished so a rendezvous with an ATM was also a priority.
We could have accomplished those things before we hit the hotel, but railway ticket offices and Black Monsters aren't a good match, so we took the item in question to its overnight lodgings, where we found our room was ready for us. That, at least, took another item out of the equation since there was no need to get back to formally check in.
Downstairs we had a chat to the very helpful gentleman on the front desk, and headed back to the station for tickets and cash replenishment. There were, basically three main items on the agenda, and the discussion at the hotel had done a fair bit to sort them into a workable sequence.
We started with a trip across town to the star shaped fortress at Goryokaku, a relic of the era when Japan was just opening up to contact with the West, built in the last years of the Edo Period to defend Hakodate against imperialist threats from Western powers. Completed in 1864, Goryōkaku was Japan's first European-style fortress, finished just in time for it to be occupied as the headquarters of the secessionist Ezo Republic after Shogunate rebel Enomoto Takeaki fled to Hakodate with the remnants of his navy and his handful of French advisers in 1866. They formally established the Republic of Ezo on Christmas Day and made unsuccessful attempts to gain international recognition through the foreign legations in thecity, but government forces defeated the secessionists in the Battle of Hakodate in 1869 and the city and fort surrendered peacefully.
Once the fort had lost its military significance, it was turned into a public park, with 1,600 cherry trees were planted round the moats, making it one of Hokkaido's best cherry blossom spots and the best views come from the nearby Goryōkaku Tower though you’re apparently likely to be waiting up to three hours to make the ascent at the height of the
sakura season. A hundred metres up looking towards the Former Magistrate Office in the centre of the fort, you can see why.
The area around the castle and tower is a noted eating and drinking area, and we'd picked up two recommendations for lunch. Faced with a choice between curry and
ramen the noodles won, largely due to the number of encounters I've had with curry over the past week.
Ramen was always going to be Madam's preferred option anyway, so there was an element of diplomacy in there as well.
The
ramen arrived in a large bowl of stock, and having once again left Hughesy's fork at the hotel I had no choice but to have a go with the chopsticks. As it turned outI could have asked for a fork since my unorthodox but highly effective chopstick technique prompted one of the waiters to deliver one. By that point, however, I'd demolished about 90% of the noodle content, so the fork remained where it had been placed.
From there we headed into the Tower for a panoramic view across the city as a whole and the fortress in particular, and we made our way back downstairs after a wander around the historical explanations and little dioramas and headed for the fortress itself, where the defensive walls had been planted with
sakura, providing the basis for what could have been an extensive photographic session.
We had, however, other fish to fry so we made our way back to the tram line and headed for the old Foreign Quarter. As one of the first ports opened to foreign shipping you might have tipped great things for Hakodate, but relative isolation (which was, I suspect,one of the reasons why the port was selected in the first place) meant the city was bypassed by later, more centrally positioned rivals. That, of course, means much of what was built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is still there, assuming it wasn't destroyed in the 1907 fire, and much of what fell victim to the flames seems to have been rebuilt in a similar style.
Interestingly, the area near the foot of Mount Hakodate is known as
Motomachi, which translates as
original town, which probably explains the presence of the old Hakodate Public Hall a European-style building which housed Hakodate's government in the early twentieth century. Equally interesting is the fact that Kobe, Nagasaki and Yokohama also feature districts bearing the same name.
We took a lengthy ramble through the hillside section of the area, passing Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Episcopal Churches, the old and Russian and British Consulates, and the Higashi Honganji Temple and made our way down to the red brick warehouses along the waterfront which have been redeveloped into a trendy shopping, dining and entertainment complex. It’s a prime example of the sort of shopping you tend to find in a touristy area of a gift-oriented society as well as a hub of the city's eating and drinking activities.
We also passed Japan’s first concrete electricity pole, and located the Spanish style eatery Madam had selected as a possible dinner option.
By this time we were waiting for sunset, since the third leg of the Hakodate trifecta involved an ascent of Mount Hakunodate to view one of the best three nighttime vistas in Japan (alongside Nagasaki's Mount Inasa and Kobe's Mount Rokko) that happens to be rated the equal of the evening views across Naples and Hong Kong. The rambling had just about run out of possibilities around four, so with a good hour and a half to wait for the bus that would take us to the summit we headed back to the hotel for a brief spell.
The helpful advice we'd received on arrival hadn't quite turned out to be on the money, since he'd advised against the purchase of a day long tram ticket, which seemed to cost more than the likely sum total of fares between the railway station and the fortress and back to Motomachi, but we both agreed that if we'd shelled out for the day pass we might have headed further around to the Foreigners' Cemetery rather than moseying back to the accommodation.
In any case, rugged up to the best of our ability we were back out around 5:10, heading for the bus terminal, where a 5:30 service would take us up to the top. Actually, as it turned out, we were lucky to be on the spot early since our position in the queue that formed after the
Motomachi Gourmet bus left landed us seats rather than standing room.
Mount Hakodate is a lumpy, 334 metre high, wooded mountain at the southern end of the peninsula on which central Hakodate is located with the local nickname of
Gagyūzan (Mount Cow's Back), since the mountain allegedly resembles a resting cow. Once you’re at the summit there are a couple of observation platforms, souvenir shops, a cafe and a restaurant.
Advice at the hotel had suggested the bus (¥360 return) rather than the rope way (¥640/1160 one-way/return) which might have been quicker, but was definitely more expensive. It would also (and I admit I'm guessing here) have provided a continuous vista along a single line of sight where the bus, twisting and turning on its way up the ascent, offered a couple of rather spectacular views on both sides of the vehicle. This is also a significant factor since the facilities at the top are frequently shrouded in cloud.
Hint: If you take the bus, try to wangle seats on the same side for both legs of the journey. There are good views from both sides of the vehicle, and if you swap you'll end up basically seeing the same thing both ways.
The bus was close to packed to the gunwhales on the way up, but once we were there the mob dispersed to all quarters, with most of them evidently opting to descend via the rope way. Actually, bus one way, rope way t'other seemed to be the generally preferred option since we found ourselves sharing the downward bus with a bunch of stylishly dressed young hipsters who alighted in the gourmet quarter, evidently out for a big night out.
I guessed they hadn't caught an earlier bus, had made the ascent via the rope way, and with the sightseeing done were off to make merry.
We took ourselves around to a suitable vantage point overlooking the city for a round of snapshot action where capturing the full moon over the city lights was a priority. Once we'd accomplished that we made our way into the summit complex, with the requisite array of gift shops, tea houses and restaurants and a rooftop viewing area that might have offered the best views but was also, predictably, packed along the railings, making photography a marginally more difficult assignment.
In any case we were out to get a seat onthe 6:20 bus back to the bottom, and found ourselves occupying the same seats we'd had for the ascent, thus locking in the
both sides of the view aspect.
Back on the ground we headed back to the hotel, since the camera bag was now surplus to requirements, and the plan for the rest of the evening involved chicken yaki tori and a couple of cleansing ales. That plan came unstuck when we stopped to chat with the helpful front desk man,who informed us the proprietor of the convenient eatery next door was inclined to be difficult. (
Really? a chef with quirky personality issues? Who'd have thunk?)
He directed us instead to a rather interesting little warren of eating and drinking places a good couple of hundred metres away on the other side of the major intersection near the railway station where we'd boarded the bus. Now, you might take this next bit the wrong way, so it's important to emphasize that while I was keen to hit the
yaki tori chicken with a couple of beers for the evening meal the key issues were avoiding a big meal, and, particularly, avoiding the rice, salad and
miso soup that almost invariably accompanies a set meal in Japan. In short, I was looking for a little bit of something tasty, preferably something that didn't require chopsticks.
We arrived in a little maze that contained about fourteen assorted eateries, most of them of the sit at the counter and drink while you snack on the nibbles you can order off the blackboard menu. There weren't any spaces at the yaki tori place, but there were a number of alternatives. The problem was, initially, deciding which one, and then when we'd settled on one particular establishment, avoiding Madam's natural inclination to try as many as possible of the yummy alternatives.
Personally, I would have been happy to have had another couple of goes at the scallops we started with, simmered in a little stock on top of a small metho stove, with a particularly large shell as a cooking vessel. I wasn't keen on the sight of raw scallops, but once they'd simmered away atop the little cooker the result was quite superb. As stated, once they were gone I could easily have gone another, probably another and quite possibly a fourth serve, turning the pieces in the cooking broth and taking hearty swigs of beer in between turns.
Madam, on the other hand, couldn't help but order
sashimi, which I'm sure I could have done had I been Japanese, and there was a dish of potatoes where you were supposed to hollow out a space on the middle and insert raw squid and a daub of butter. This, I gather, is a Hokkaido delicacy, and it wasn't bad, but, as the reader might guess, it involved chopsticks to do the hollowing out, something I was hoping to avoid.
I was also hoping to avoid the suggestions that I might like to try assorted bits and pieces off the platter of
sashimi which followed said platter's arrival. Like I said earlier, I was after a small fed that didn't involve chopstick and definitely wanted to avoid concern about whether I was enjoying myself. Because, actually, I was. We're talking an eating and drinking environment you're not going to find in Australia, and if there weren't the old language issues I'd have been joining in the badinage.
We were in there following a chat with the proprietress, whose son acted as the barman while she did a bit in the room at the rear that served as the kitchen. When we arrived there was a married couple finishing up before heading elsewhere and a couple of girls apparently on a quiet night out. Conversation ebbed and flowed back and forth, aided, abetted and redirected by the bar man, who was a pretty classy operator. After the couple left, a rotund and rather jovial gentleman arrived, settled in to simmer scallops and engage in repartee, much of which seemed to concern the relative merits of Hokkaido and Tokyo, which was, as far as I could gather, where the two girls were from.
All in all a very enjoyable little session, except for the fact that the bloke over there was sitting down to what I'd have preferred to be eating rather than the other bits and pieces that seemed to be deemed necessary to broaden Hughesy's gustatory horizons. Those attempts we're definitely something I could have done without, as was the inevitable consequence of moving the venue from staggering distance of the hotel to a much more remote location.
We'd been snug enough in the little eatery, and when we hit the side street outside things weren't too bad, but as we stood at the intersection near the bus terminal waiting for the lights to change the wind factor kicked in big time. It's fair to say I've never been colder in my life. One minute I was fine, but as the body core temperature plunged, Madam looked in my direction, noted that I seemed to be having trouble and asked whether I was all right. An anguished No produced an offer of the scarf she'd been using to insulate her neck, which produced a minor thermal crisis on that front. Needless to say, once the lights decided to change, there was a frantic scramble across the intersection, along the main street to the side street that housed the hotel and though that cut out a large part of the wind chill it took a good five to ten minutes to restore the equanimity once we were safely inside.
A warm bath for Madam, a hearty slug of medicinal sake for Hughesy and by nine thirty both of us were snugly pushing up Zs, with the prospect of an early rise on the morrow, when temperatures were bound to be a major cause for concern.
