The Yamabiko to Morioka only took 12 minutes to arrive in Morioka, we had the entire train car to ourselves! We arrived in Morioka at 12:06 and found a shop to buy bento boxes. I got a salmon and rice bento and Jives got a mixed fish sushi set. We also bought local craft beers and a radler. I bought us both a Suica card (train and metro pass) at the Newstand, as we would need it to take the streetcar in Hakodate later that day. You pay 2000 yen for the card but 1500 yen is credit to use for fairs. We jumped on the train at 1:05pm and headed towards Hokkaido!

The shinkansen goes under the sea and reaches depths of 100-240 metres or 330-790 feet below the sea level and sea bed. The tunnel is called “Seikan tunnel” and connects Aomori to Hokkaido. The tunnel length is 53.85km or 33.46 miles so you are underwater for quite a while. We arrived in Hakodate at 3:01 and transferred to the JR line that takes you into the city.

We walked through Hakodate station and got a stamp of a squid that seems to be the mascot here in Hakodate. We then walked to the streetcar stop and got on the tram, tapping our Suica card on the way on (enter the back door, exit at the front). We took the tram to pretty much the last stop “Yunokawaonsen” where our Ryokan was. We walked 5 minutes to our hotel, “Takubokutei”.

We couldn’t see a sign and I guess we were looking pretty lost, so a lady came out of a building… she worked at the hotel we were looking for, and we were standing right in front of it! We checked into the hotel with no problem and went up to see our room.

It was a traditional tatami room with an amazing view of Hakodate’s mountain and the city (9th floor). We dropped our stuff off and set out on an adventure. We walked down the street to a foot bath we had seen on the busy street corner. The area we were staying in was an onsen village, so hot steam was rising out of the manholes. Sitting with our feet in the onsen water was magical, with all the snow and lights around us. We then walked along a beautiful winter time illumination pathway. We then stopped into a ramen restaurant called Maido for dinner. Jives got spicy miso ramen and I ordered regular miso ramen. The warm ramen was exactly what we needed to warm ourselves after the cold walk in the snow. 

We then walked back to our hotel and headed up to the roof top onsen at about 9pm. The onsen was gorgeous!

There was an area of baskets to put your clothing in, and then a long section of wash stations and a big long bath in the same room. One end of the bath was hot and the other was not as hot. I sat on the hot side for a while before going outside to the rooftop onsen. The outside bath was incredible! The bath itself was made of rocks and surrounded by cedar trees and best of all it was snowing softly. I sat there with two ladies and then a third lady joined us. I soaked in this bath for a long time and then headed back to the room.