On October 1st we went to Onumakoen first, which is a quasi-national park north of Hakodate. Here you can walk along a path that leads you through the various islands conntected by small bridges. You can reach this park comfortably with a train and we would definitely recommend it, even when you’re only briefly visiting Hakodate.
Afterwards we took a look at Goryokaku park inside the city. Formerly, the seat of the magistrate, the main building is located between lots of ancient pine trees lending additional gravitas to the already impressive site. The layout of the fortess containing the whole park is in the shape of a five pointed star, explaining the name: Goryokaku means five-corner-fort.
We could have looked at the magistrate building from the inside, but we wanted to be on time for our Shinkansen to Honshu (the main island of Japan) and so we rather headed to the trainstation a bit early. The trainride went expectedly smooth and we reached Hachinohe in time: The first station of the Michinoku Coastal Trail!
It did get a little bit exciting in the end, though: We noticed that we (Jörg) had left the folder containing our detailed plans for the trip as well as the translation of the driver’s license at the counter in Hokkaido where we had bought our tickets. Luckily we could communicate our problem to the helpful people of the train company (JR) and organize for our folder to be sent to a future accomodation.
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