Hakodate Travel Guide

The Hakodate Jomon Culture Center, opened in 2011 inside the roadside station Jomon Roman Minamikayabe in northern Hakodate, displays Jomon pottery and stone tools excavated in the city, including Hokkaido's only National Treasure - the 3,500-year-old hollow dogu from the Shakotonai site - plus hands-on craft programmes.

Chuka-sanso (the Chinese Cemetery) stands at 23 Funamicho in Hakodate, Hokkaido, within the Hakodate Foreign Cemetery overlooking Hakodate Bay, alongside the Russian and other sections. It originated in 1876 (Meiji 9), when the remains of Chinese who had drifted to Aomori were buried here, and has since been managed by local Chinese communities with spring and autumn memorial rites. Inside its brick walls and Chinese gate lie Qing-era tombstones blending Chinese and Western styles, facing the Tsugaru Strait and the Matsumae peninsula—especially moving at sunset. It is a quiet place of remembrance; please visit respectfully.

The Hakodate City Museum of Northern Peoples occupies the former Bank of Japan Hakodate branch, built in 1926 and reopened as a museum in 1989. Its collections centre on Ainu artefacts alongside Nivkh, Orok and Aleut life, earning a Michelin Green Guide star.

At the heart of one of Japan's oldest Chinatowns, Hakodate's Chinese Hall is the only original hall of the local Chinese community still in use. Its vermilion multi-tiered roof, upturned eaves and painted beams stand out against Hakodate's townscape, recalling the late-19th-century boom when Chinese settlers thrived after the port opened alongside Yokohama and Nagasaki. Still fragrant with incense, it comes alive with dragon dances at Lunar New Year.

Uomi-zaka is a steep slope in Hakodate, named because from the top one could once look down into the bay and even see fish swimming (the water is no longer that clear). The short stone-paved incline links the Motomachi hillside with the lower town and is a classic vantage point over Hakodate Port and the ferry route to Aomori — a quiet stop on any Motomachi church-and-slope walk.

Koryuji is a Jodo-sect temple in Hakodate's Motomachi district, its gate and main hall a calm, solemn note among the old stone lanes. It has kept the devotional thread of a port city where Japanese, Chinese and Western faiths long mixed. The vermilion gate posts and stone steps make an easy pause on a neighbourhood walk.