After getting our butts off the train and taking many wrong turns when we reached Hakodate, we finally reached a ‘minshuku’ owned by a Taiwanese lady to stay for 2 nights. She came out to greet us in her high hair, fluorescent pink turtleneck sweater and furry brown vest in a warm matronly manner. We exchanged introductions and she hastened us to take a rest in the guest hall.
The place was really clean and neatly decorated with lace curtains and china. A desk sits in the corner of the room with a computer, and there were a few luggage bags chucked on the sofa by other visitors from Singapore. Beezai started clicking away with her ixus, and then after seeking the lady’s help on getting out and about in Hakodate, we set off to explore on our own.
The sky was getting really dark although it was only noon. Wind was howling from the seas at the end of the long street. We set out to find the nicest place for a quick ramen lunch, as informed by Auntie Minshuku (her name changed to protect her privacy :P). We dragged our tired feet along, the wind kept blowing my jacket open (the zip’s spoilt, damn….) Then we reached a diner owned by 3 hunky guys who looked like each of them’d own Harleys, made us tasty bowls of ramen. If you’re curious how we’d order food in Japan, we had to speak in Japanese. So, better learn some Japanese if you want to backpack in Japan ya! By the way, I’ve never seen a real diner back home. Neva!
The 3 hunky men served us ramen in cute Hello Kitty bowls…so kawaii! And they were pink in colour. I felt as if I’m back in mama’s kitchen cooking maggi in my own favourite bowl~ aaah.. after much slurping, I took a look out of the diner, the door curtains were being blown crazy like a storm was hitting any second. We were like, “WAHHHHHHHHHHHH……………Go go go!!” And off we went out walking back to Auntie Minshuku.
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Auntie Minshuku showed us another place to see. The beach! So we trudged along the street till we reached its end and by then the wind was blowing reaaaaally hard. Beezai’s long hair was flapping in her face whenever she turned sideways, and I had a hard time trying to keep my eyes opened. We photographed the tall waves, the nice house that sits directly on the beach, the big ugly grey clouds and also posing with each other with crazy hair flying in all directions. After that we explored around a little and went back to our cute little lodge.
To cut a long story short, which I think I will spend more than a page explaining…we went out again to look for food in the evening. We were walking along an unknown street next to the river and sea, and there was an overhead bridge that shows the temperature of the town. It was 11degrees celcius as I remembered it. It was quite strange that nobody was to be seen. The wind was howling even harder and I started to feel some air pressure on the right side of my head. Two kids were practically speeding towards us like they were escaping something horrible. The 3 of us soldiered on, and the wind grew EVEN stronger! Suddenly it occured to us why the town seemed deserted……
Each of us tried to keep ourselves rooted to the ground we were walking on. I had never experienced such strong winds in my LIFE!!!!! We tried to run, but everytime we lifted our foot, we felt the wind would blow us away. Chanjie being the cutest and petitest of us all had the hardest time. Luckily there were buildings that occasionally sheltered us from the sea “breeze”…We were shrieking whenever we almost got “blown away”. I wouldn’t say it was scary, it was quite the adrenaline rush. But you’ve got to feel it yourself, the wind back home is NOTHING compared to the wind by the sea in Hakodate. Trust me.
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