There are more than 360 stalls in the daily morning market (Hakodate Asaichi) near the railway station, and the action kicks off early. Actually there wasn’t that much actual action when we strolled through, since most customers have the sense to wait until things are set up before they arrive to make their selections.
So if you’re an early bird it’s a case of getting there at five in the morning (six in winter) but there’s really no hurry. The markets, in an area covering four city blocks, operate through the morning, closing at noon, offer an incredible variety of cold water seafood, including crabs, salmon eggs,sea urchin freshly caught squid, scallops, Atka mackerel, and many other kinds of fresh fish and shellfish as well as fresh produce.
And you don’t have to cart your selection back to base to cook it. There are a multitude of restaurants and cafes in the area and plenty of stalls that will serve up a seafood breakfasts, such as uni-ikura domburi (seafood-topped rice bowl).
Actually, apart from the famous Hokkaido crabs, Hakodate's signature fish is squid and the signature dish is shio rāmen, noodles prepared with squid stock instead of the pork stock you’d be likely to be served elsewhere. Not really Hughesy’s cup of tea, and neither is ika-meshi (rice-stuffed squid) but I’ll be back to gorge myself on shellfish and crab…
On the leg of the trip where being on time really mattered we were comfortably seated on the train a good quarter of an hour before departure. Not that I'm suggesting punctuality didn't matter on other stages, but if we were going to fit everything into the day's itinerary we had to be on the 8:08 Limited Express Super Hakucho and were going to be pretty smart about moving to the Shinkansen that was going to drop us at Sendai in time to head on a scenic sail around the bay at Matsushima.
We were on the left hand side of the train this time around, which meant another view across the water while we made our way towards the tunnel. The views across the bay were, once again, quite spectacular, though they'd lost some of the wow factor after the previous night's trip to the top of Mount Hakunodate.
There were the same false alarms we'd experienced on the northward journey the day before, but this time we were running on time and there was a helpful diagram and cheat sheet on the back of each seat in the carriage.
We were slightly behind the 8:56 on the back of the seat schedule when we hit the tunnel, passing the deepest point around 9:08 and the Tappi Undersea Station at 9:15, though it wasn't easy to tell which of the lights we passed were station and which belonged to a train passing in the opposite direction. My money was on a station to the left and a train to the right, but without a way of verifying the guess… More...