Comfort Hotel Hakodate

Sunday, we finally went ashore to Hakodate, Japan. It felt so good to be firmly on terra firma. We did a bit of sightseeing and shopping. It was a very clean Japanese town. Hope all is well at home. Also, due to the typhoon, we will not be going to Tokyo. Instead we will spend the extra time in Kobe. Cub has put ...

... I have been "sea sick" for two days. Cub has been fine&#8212;one of the lucky ones I'm told.<br><br>Many guests have had the problem too. The ship recommends &#8220;green apples,&#8221; hot tea, and crackers and only sipping liquids. Whatever it was I ate, it really helped. I&#8217;m feeling very well today despite ...

... raining.<br> Somehow we made it back to the bus stop without getting completely drenched, but by that point we were all groggy, hungry, and tired of being illiterate. For dinner we went to a cafe that was pretty unremarkable except for, I kid you not, pokemon shaped ice cream cones.<br> We wandered back to the hotel and expected to fall asleep. But, of course, we caught a second wind stayed up to the wee hours of the morning. Tomorrow's train ride will be fun.

... Hakodate, seafood means 'catch heaps of weird **** from the ocean and steam it, wrap it in seaweed or put it in soup with a boiled egg'. C'mon. This place is known for its squid. There's a STATUE of a squid. Do you think we could get a little bag of calamari? The morning markets were pretty interesting though. It reminded us of the Queen Vic markets in Melbourne (you know, except with dried cuttlefish and sea urchin burgers...) Today we ...

We've stayed about 1 week on Hokkaido and went to 4 different places. The first one was Toya-Ko, a volcanic area with some smoking mounts. The last eruption happened in 2000 from Mt. Usu, an active stratovolcano. This national parc has splendid sceneries and was very interesting, but we wouldn't really want to leave there knowing that a volcano could wake up anytime ! After that, we headed to Sapporo where we met the rain and even some ...

... 10 000 cerisiers en fleurs. Dommage pour nous, a cause du froid du mois d'avril, la floraison est en retard. Meme s'il y a a priori 250 especes differentes, 5% seulement des arbres etaient en fleur... Ca sera pour la prochaine fois ;-) Avant de partir pour Tokyo nous avons fait le tour du "Morning Market" ou etaient etales des centaines de crabes, mollusques divers, oursins, ormeaux, coquilles St Jacques... qu'on pouvait deguster sur place passes au BBQ.

... is a series of tunnel and doesn' really get you great views and the only other nice sea glimpses I got were on the express to Nagasaki, but that wound in and out of cities so it was less enjoyable. Here is endless blue waters, maybe distant mountains and sandy beaches (with lots of breakwaters...mor excessive land managment). And it was sunny, not a cloud in the sky (take that Japan meteorological agency). Arrived in warm (surprise), sunny Hakodate, a city sitting on ...

... qui avais boucler tout un secteur. J'ai finalement fini par savoir que hakodate a une communaute russe qui date des premiers echange commerciaux a la fin des annees 1800. Donc le ministre des affaires etrangeres de la russie etait sur place. Deux helicoptere, une centaine de policier, un quartier de ferme a toute circulation. jai fini par me trouver un chemin pour me rendre dans le quartier ...

... slivered dried squid. This inspired the others, and one by one they came over and giggling they each gave us a little something: nori-wrapped rice crackers, tiny sugary almond cookies, coconut-mint candies. For dinner we made our first visit to a sushi restaurant since arriving in Japan. It was one of those places with small plates on a conveyor, but this place had not one, but two tracks. Plates of two pieces ranged from $1.30 for ...