Hakodate travel guide

Top 10 sights in Hakodate

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   1© Keihin nike · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Goryōkaku

   Japan's first Western-style fortification, a five-pointed star completed at Hakodate in 1866 and, three years later, the last stand of the short-lived Republic of Ezo. Fifteen hundred cherry trees now fill the outline in spring.

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   2© 663highland · CC BY 2.5

   Hakodate Orthodox Church

   The Hakodate Orthodox Church is the birthplace of Orthodoxy in Japan, a Russian-style building with white walls and green roofs. It is the centre of the walk through the churches on the Motomachi slope.

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   Benten Daiba

   Benten Daiba is the remains of a late Edo battery that guarded the entrance to Hakodate harbour. The ground around it has been reclaimed and little is left standing, but it was one of the positions fought over in the Battle of Hakodate.

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   4© Satoshin at Japanese Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Shiryōkaku

   A small four-pointed earthwork north of Goryōkaku, thrown up by the Ezo forces in 1869 as an outwork during the final campaign. It is quiet, unrestored and rarely visited.

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   5© 663highland · CC BY 2.5

   Hakodate City Museum of Literature

   The Hakodate City Museum of Literature covers the writers connected with the city, Ishikawa Takuboku among them. It adds a spoonful of literature to a walk through the bay area.

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   6© 掬茶 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Trappistine Convent

   The Trappistine convent was the first contemplative house for women in Japan, and its garden and archive room are open to visitors. The cookies and butter sweets made by the nuns have become the standard souvenir.

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   Hakodate City Museum

   A museum of history and natural history in Hakodate Park. Its predecessors, the first and second provisional Hakodate museums, opened in May 1879 and 1884, and from 1932 served as the fisheries hall and the indigenous cultures hall.

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   8© 663highland · CC BY 2.5

   Hakodate City Museum of Northern Peoples

   A museum of the northern peoples — Ainu, Nivkh, Uilta and the peoples of the Amur and Alaska — in the former Bank of Japan branch of 1926. Its Ainu textile and woodcarving collection is one of the more serious ones outside Sapporo.

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   9© J o · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Kōsetsu-en

   Kōsetsuen, in Miharashi Park, is reckoned the finest autumn colour in Hakodate. The nights when it is floodlit in autumn are its high point.

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    Hakodate Hachiman Shrine

    A Hachiman shrine above the city, whose present hall of 1915 combines the Hachiman roof form with a Shinmei front — a hybrid called Hakodate-zukuri and found only here. The approach stairs give one of the better views over the harbour.

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Popular tickets & tours in Hakodate

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1. 

   1© 函館市 · CC BY 2.1 jp

   Shinoridate

   The site of a fortified residence of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, one of the twelve Japanese strongholds built on Hokkaido before the Ainu revolts drove most of them out. Nearly four hundred thousand Chinese coins were dug up beside it in 1968.

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   2© Iso10970 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Hakodate Park

   A Western-style park of 1879 at the foot of Mount Hakodate, laid out with money raised by residents when a British consul suggested the town should have one. It holds Japan's oldest surviving amusement ride, a small wooden roller coaster of 1950.

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   3© 663highland · CC BY 2.5

   Hakodate Museum of Art, Hokkaido

   A prefectural art museum opened in 1986, holding calligraphy and modern art with a regional focus, and a collection of the ink-stone and seal carving that Hakodate merchants brought back from the continent.

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   Shinshū Ōtani-ha Hakodate Betsu-in Temple

   Rebuilt after the fire of 1907 and the first temple in Japan built in reinforced concrete — a deliberate response to a city that had burnt down repeatedly. It is a branch of Higashi Hongan-ji and is now an Important Cultural Property for exactly that reason.

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   5© 663highland · CC BY 2.5

   Goryōkaku Tower

   Only from the observation deck of Goryōkaku Tower does the star-shaped fort read whole. In cherry-blossom and snow season, going up is all but obligatory.

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   Hokuto City Hometown Museum

   A local history museum in Hokuto, created after the city was formed in 2006. It covers the farming and fishing of this stretch of coast, and the first Western-style farm and paddy fields opened in Hokkaido, which were here.

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   7© 663highland · CC BY 2.5

   Catholic Motomachi Church

   The Catholic Motomachi Church is a Gothic-spired chapel; standing side by side with the Orthodox and Anglican churches, it gives the hillside its unmistakably Hakodate look.

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   Motomachi Park

   Motomachi Park is a hillside park where the old Hakodate branch office of the Hokkaido government still stands. The benches looking down over the harbour are the best seats in the house.

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