We sat for a while.
And then the rain turned into snow! Waahahaha...
This is never going to end, we told ourselves.
The Grandfather said:
"Aiyah... what is this little bit of rain and snow, right?
We've been through worse... come, come, let's move along, shall we?"
Hehe... precisely what I wanted.
In fact the old man was correct.
This very team actually had much tougher walks under oxygen-rarefied atmosphere, in temperature of negative territories, high up above 5000m before. (Another story altogether, that one was...)
So ok, guys... the old General says go, we shall all go!
Some more brief histories of Hakodate
You see, one of the most important thing about coming to Hakodate was to visit the historical district.
Hakodate had a turbulent history in its own way, revolving around Japanese colonisation of the land and the subsequent Ainu revolts.
In the year 1454, Kono Kaganokami Masamichi from the Kono family came over to Hakodate and built his own mansion right here in the historical disctrict.
The mansion resembled the shape of a box. And thus the name 箱馆 (box mansion) was given to not only the mansion, but also the place.
The word 箱was later changed to 涵, and the final name of Hakodate 涵馆 came about.
Of course, the aboriginal Ainu were finally defeated and suppressed and now very much assimilated into Hokkaido's culturo-socio-economical structure.
But there had been a recent efforts to re-introduce the history and culture of Ainu to the people of Hokkaido.
To keep things simple for myself and my children to understand, through the years of turmoil after the Kono family's downfall,
there was a shogunate that came in to expand the colony to the eastern parts of Hokkaido.
And there was the famous merchant who came and established the trading post here.
And during the Meiji period, the Hakodate government became the centre of administration for the rest of Hokkaido and it was here that the American trading ships first arrive to set up their post started doing trading with the Japanese.
Of course, following closely the Europeans came and set up their Embassies and Churches, and European-style houses here in Hakodate.
That is why there was a saying that Hakodate is the most European-like city in the whole Japan.
Continuing our walk...
Looking back, I felt that in order to really explore the whole historical district, it would have been better to visit during the non-winter seasons
as it would be easier to walk around and the daylight hours would have been longer.
But anyway, during winter the whole area presented itself in a very different light which again more than made up for the lost of other opportunities.
Here we were, at the Jetty marked
B. a distance after we turned in.
I remember distinctly, it was still snowing quite a fair bit here, and right after this point as we continued our journey, the snow got even heavier...
Admiring the jetty...
... and what? The General complained of cold? Again?
Fascinatingly, the houses all over this district were all like this.
Neo-Victorian style in design.
And at that point, the whole place was literally like a dead town, not many pedestrians, hardly any vehicles...
Only a few crazy Singaporeans braving the snow. 笑的! (Siao one!)
.
