Morning Market, Motomachi and the Night View That Named a Fortune
Live seafood at dawn · stone-paved lanes lined with Gothic spires · the view from a volcanic summit that makes grown travellers go very quiet
The market is a two-minute walk from Hakodate Station and opens at 5:00 am from May through December (6:00 am in winter). Come before 7:00 am — that is when the stock is freshest and the aisles are still navigable. By 9:00 am it turns into a proper scrum of tour groups.
The must-order is kaisen-don: a rice bowl you build yourself by pointing at whatever you want — sea urchin (uni), salmon roe (ikura), scallop, snow crab, sweet shrimp. Prices run from ¥1,500 for a modest bowl to ¥3,000 for a mountain of the good stuff. If you want a story to tell at dinner, try the squid-fishing experience (ika-tsuri): you drop a line into a tank of live squid, catch one, and the stall immediately turns it into ikizukuri sashimi. The texture is noticeably different from anything you have eaten before.
Walk down to the bay and spend an hour at Kanemori (金森赤レンガ倉庫), a row of 1909 red-brick warehouses converted into shops, cafes and a small brewery. The morning light on the water with Mt. Hakodate as a backdrop is genuinely photogenic — this is a good place to sit with a coffee and let the morning unfold before heading uphill. In cherry blossom season (late April to early May) the scene is almost unreasonably pretty.
Take tram line D to Suehirocho stop, then walk uphill into Motomachi (元町). This is the neighbourhood where foreign consulates settled in the 1860s — and it still looks the part. A Russian Orthodox cathedral with green onion domes, a French Catholic church in Gothic stone, a British consulate that is now a public park, and a row of candy-coloured wooden houses all occupy the same short hillside. None of it looks like the Japan most visitors picture.
The unmissable moment is Hachimanzaka (八幡坂) — a perfectly straight stone-paved slope that drops from the hill straight down to the bay, framed on both sides by ginkgo trees. Stand at the top looking down: the slope, the sea, a ship in the harbour, and the mountain behind you. That is the image that ends up on every Hakodate postcard. After Hachimanzaka, continue uphill to Motomachi Park for a higher viewpoint over the bay.
Head back to your hotel for a break and a layer of clothing. The summit of Mt. Hakodate sits at 334 metres and is consistently 5–8 degrees cooler than the city, with strong wind even in summer. A light jacket is essential any time of year; in autumn or winter, something genuinely warm. Check the forecast before going up — on heavily overcast days the view is lost and the trip is not worth making. On a clear evening, it is one of the best night views in the world.
Arrive at the ropeway base 30–45 minutes before sunset to queue and get a good spot on the observation deck. The Mt. Hakodate Ropeway takes three minutes to climb 334 metres and runs gondolas every 10–15 minutes. The observation deck at the top is open air on three sides.
The view is called the "100 billion yen night view" (百億円の夜景) — a name that came from a 1980s stockbroker who said the panorama was worth his entire portfolio. What you see: Hakodate sits on an hourglass-shaped peninsula. From above at night, the city lights spread out in two wide arcs on either side of the narrow waist, the dark ocean separating everything with absolute precision. The best window is the 30 minutes after sunset, when the sky is still a deep gradient but the city lights are fully on. Stay an hour, have a drink at the summit cafe, then come back down for dinner.
