Ferry to Hakodate

By Ferry from Aomori to Hakodate

I had been in Aomori seeing the Jōmon prehistoric settlement, visiting the Seiryū-ji temple complex and its Big Buddha, and enjoying the Spring Festival.

Now I was headed north across the Tsugaru Strait from Honshū to Hokkaidō, between the ports of Aomori and Hakodate. I would see a number of things in Hakodate, but I would also venture out to the Ōfune Site and the Kakinoshima Site, two more prehistoric Jōmon culture settlements in addition to what I had seen on the outskirts of Aomori.

Small portion of 1:1,000,000 Operational Navigation Chart F-10 from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. Compiled in 1974 and revised in 1981.

Ferry Across the Tsugaru Strait

It's 108 kilometers in a straight line from the ferry port in Aomori to the one in Hakodate. The Tsugaru Kaikyō Ferry line operates ferries along this and other Honshū–Hokkaidō routes. There are six trips per day in each direction between Aomori and Hakodate. It takes about three hours and forty minutes to cross. I decided on the 10:30–14:10 crossing from Aomori to Hakodate, highlighted below. It was a reasonable departure time, and besides, I couldn't check into my hotel in Hakodate until 15:00.

I had asked about ticket purchases at the Tourist Information Office at the Aomori Station. The ferry port is about three kilometers east of the train station. Should I walk there or go there on a bus to buy my ticket in advance?

The Tourist Information Office was very helpful, as I have generally found throughout Japan. The woman there called the ferry company and asked, and found that as long as I got to the ferry terminal in plenty of time, I should have no trouble buying a ticket for that run, even though it was the Thursday of Golden Week.

To get to the ferry terminal, I simply summoned an Uber ride, which was a taxi also operating as an Uber car. Yes, I had experimented with the Uber app in advance. Uber operates in Japan, and specifically in Aomori, and several taxis also operate through Uber.

When I looked for an Uber ride that morning around 08:45, there was a swarm of cars in the vicinity as I had seen before. I took my pack down to the lobby, turned in my room key, and completed the Uber summoning ritual.

I was soon on my way. By 09:04 we were approaching the ferry terminal.

First things first. The driver dropped me at the door to the ferry terminal building, and I went inside and bought my ticket.

Then, I looked at the bentō meals in the shop in the terminal, and decided to walk back across the parking lot to the Family Mart convenience store I had seen out by the street. I bought a lunch and a drink there, and returned to the waterfront. Here was my ferry, ready to depart.

Walking around the stern, I found the ship and the boarding preparation familiar from riding ferries through the Greek islands. Several personal cars, motorcycles, and commercial trucks were queued up and ready to drive on board. The ブルードルフイン or Blue Dolphin is a "RO-RO" or Roll-On, Roll-Off ferry.

Looking back toward the center of Aomori, I saw another, smaller, ferry.

Beyond that, the center of Aomori. And even further away, snow-topped mountains southeast of the city.

The ferry would make its way between the jetties and then continue north into Mutsu Bay and the Tsugaru Strait.

With my ticket they had given me a slip of paper — for the 10:30 departure, I should be up on the third level of the ferry ticket building, where the passageway extended across to the ship, by 10:00-10:15.

Sure enough, right at 10:00 they began boarding. Queue up, walk to the machine and hold your ticket up to the scanner, then walk into the tube and onto the ship. By 10:10, everyone was on board.

I had purchased a Standard passage ticket. I hadn't known what to make of the associated picture on the ferry company's web site and the brochure at the ferry terminal. It seemed to show a large windowless cabin with a green carpet. But the main passenger deck contained a series of spaces exactly like that. I was surprised by how many people chose to ride in one of these group cabins, sitting or lying on the floor.

I took a seat at one of the tables along large portholes in the Promenade passageways along both sides of the main deck. Salt spray on the exterior of the glass made for a fuzzy view, but it was a pleasant way to ride.

I was on the starboard side, looking out toward the Shimokita peninsula on the east side of the bay leading into the strait.

Portion of TPC F-10C from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin.

After a while, it was time to get out my bentō lunch.

A lot of international shipping moves through the Tsugaru Strait between Honshū and Hokkaidō. Ships traveling between Korea and the west coast of North America pass through here. So do some other ships traveling between North America and the Asian coast all the way down to Singapore.

Screenshot of marinetraffic.com.

We arrived at Hakodate Ferry Terminal right on time. A high-speed twin-hull ferry occupied the adjacent pier.

It was a newer design of RO-RO.

Train to Central Hakodate

It was a walk of about a kilometer and a half from the ferry terminal to the Nanaehama Station. I bought a ticket to Hakodate Station from the automated machine upstairs, and went down to the platform.

I seemed to be the only person who had walked from the ferry to the train station.

An outbound train passed through. Yes, those are narrow gauge tracks. Japan's standard track gauge is three and a half feet, or 1,067 mm. That allows for smaller radius curves going through rugged terrain. The Shinkansen uses the wider track gauge of 1,435 mm for better stability at its high speed.

Before long, my inbound train was approaching.

My ticket was just ¥ 340 for the trip to Hakodate Station. This is the ticket at top, and the receipt is the large piece at bottom.

On arrival, one of the Hakodate Station staff collects tickets from arriving Local train passengers.

To My Hotel

It was a short walk east around the large bus lot next to the JR station, then a block or so north to my hotel. Along the way I was only a little surprised to see Russian added to the languages on local signs, making it Japanese, English, Russian, Chinese, and then Korean. At this point in my trip, Russian territory was closer than Tōkyō. Hakodate was one of the first Japanese ports opened to foreign ships, and Russia maintained a significant presence here for a while. A later page in this series will show some of that.

I had reserved a room through booking.com at the Seoul Garden Hotel. There was a time, I think extending as late as the early 1990s, when the common Japanese attitude was that the Korean people were "worse than dogs". Now, however, they're valued customers. That's just good business sense. (And basic decency)

I was a little mixed up on arrival, the restaurant is what's at the door on the main street. The hotel entrance is toward the back, opening onto the rental car lot.

Despite the Korean-themed name, the hotel was traditionally Japanese. I had stepped into the hotel lobby's stone tile floor and checked in. Heading toward the elevator, however, would take me onto a carpeted floor. That meant that I needed to remove my shoes, go to the locker corresponding to my room number, and store my shoes there while putting on the slippers stored inside.

My room was furnished in the traditional Japanese style, with a tatami mat floor. You do not step onto tatami with any footware, even slippers. Walk on the tatami in bare feet.

For more on Japanese slipper protocol, and there are several parts to this and it's crucial, see my slipper protocol page on a related site.

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There are separate slippers for the toilets and bath rooms, which are shared in this hotel.

My kaiju-sized feet don't fit into standard-sized hotel slippers.

My approximation to the protocol is that I do a tip-toe shuffle with the hotel slippers in both directions between the lobby and my room. Once I get up to my room, up and down the hallway and in the toilets and bath rooms, I just go barefoot.

I noticed my innkeeper walking around upstairs, down the hallway and through the wash rooms, wearing socks without slippers. That made me feel less guilty about my protocol breach.

The prehistoric Jōmon culture was a theme for this trip, at least its first third or so. I returned to the JR Station and asked the very helpful people in the Tourist Information Office about how to get to some Jōmon sites.

The next day I would go first to the Ōfune Site and then the Kakinoshima Site, both of them a bus ride across the peninsula from Hakodate. After that, I would look around Hakodate itself.

Next❯ The Ōfune Site, a prehistoric Jōmon settlement