Hakodate Motomachi Backstreets: The Western Hill Charm Tourists Walk Past

# Hakodate Motomachi Backstreets: The Western Hill Charm Tourists Walk Past

You've already seen Motomachi — or at least, you think you have.

If you rode the ropeway up Mount Hakodate, snapped a photo of the Old Public Hall's blue-and-yellow facade, and walked the main slope back down to the red brick warehouses, you did exactly what 90% of visitors do. You saw the postcard. But you missed the neighborhood.

## Why Everyone Turns Right — and You Should Turn Left

Here's what happens: tourists arrive at the base of the ropeway station or get dropped off near the Former British Consulate. They walk the obvious route — Motomachi Park, the Orthodox Church (the one with the green dome you've seen on every Hokkaido brochure), and then down the wide, well-signposted Hachiman-zaka slope toward the bay. Tour buses idle on the main road. Everyone flows in one direction, like water finding the easiest channel.

Turn left instead. Head south from the Orthodox Church along the narrow lane that runs behind Chacha-nobori slope, and within two minutes the tourist density drops to almost zero. You're now in residential Motomachi — a neighborhood where people actually live, hang laundry between century-old wooden beams, and park their kei trucks on streets too narrow for tour buses.

This is the real architectural legacy of Hakodate's treaty port era, the one that doesn't charge admission or have a gift shop. The houses here aren't museums. They're homes that happen to be 80 to 130 years old, blending Japanese joinery with Western clapboard siding in ways that feel completely natural rather than curated.

The streets are hilly, uneven, and quiet. You'll hear crows, wind, and occasionally an elderly resident sweeping their entryway. No one will try to sell you a soft-serve ice cream.

**Pro tip:** The most interesting backstreets run between Daisan-zaka and Jujigai (十字街) to the south. Use the Orthodox Church as your starting landmark and simply walk uphill away from the water. You'll know you've gone far enough when you hit the cemetery on the hillside — that's your turnaround point.

## The Stone Walls and Wooden Facades That Outlived the Fires

Hakodate burned. Repeatedly. The Great Fire of 1907 destroyed nearly 12,000 buildings. Another in 1934 leveled much of the lower town. Fire is the defining force in this city's architectural history, which makes the survival of certain structures in the Motomachi backstreets quietly remarkable.

Walk the lanes behind Motomachi Park and you'll notice something: the stone retaining walls are old — Meiji era, some even late Edo — built from locally quarried soft volcanic rock called "Hakodate-ishi." These walls weren't decorative. They were firebreaks. Residents learned, fire after fire, that stone foundations and wide gaps between buildings were the difference between losing everything and keeping your home.

The wooden facades that sit atop these walls are a different story. Many date from the 1910s and 1920s rebuilds, when Hakodate residents — influenced by the foreign merchants and diplomats who'd lived among them since the 1850s — started incorporating Western elements not as novelty but as practical design. Double-hung sash windows provided better ventilation in Hokkaido's humid summers. Elevated wooden porches kept snow manageable in winter.

Look for the houses with "shitami-itabari" (下見板張り) — horizontal weatherboard cladding painted in faded greens, blues, and grays. These aren't trying to look European. They're a genuine Hakodate vernacular that developed because Western ship carpenters and Japanese daiku (大工, carpenters) were literally working on the same streets, sharing techniques.

On the lane that runs parallel behind the Catholic church, you'll find a stretch of five or six houses in a row where no two facades match — one has Russian-influenced arched windows, the next has a Japanese-style genkan (entryway) with a Western bay window above it. None of them have plaques. None of them are on the tourist map.

**Local secret:** Look down at the gutters and drainage channels along these backstreets. Many are lined with the same Hakodate-ishi as the retaining walls — hand-cut stone drainage that's been functioning for over a century. Infrastructure as heritage, completely unnoticed.

## Local Residents Still Living the Wayo-Setchu Blend

"Wayo-setchu" (和洋折衷) — the blending of Japanese and Western styles — is a term you'll see in Hakodate's museums and tourist literature. But in the Motomachi backstreets, it's not a historical concept. It's Tuesday.

I watched an elderly woman in a house with Victorian gingerbread trim slide open a traditional fusuma (sliding paper door) visible through her Western-style glass-paned front window. She was wearing a fleece vest over a割烹着 (kappougi, a Japanese cooking smock), watching what appeared to be a Korean drama on a flatscreen TV sitting on a low chabudai table. Three architectural eras and two countries in one living room.

This is important for visitors to understand: Motomachi is not a preserved district in the way Kyoto's Higashiyama or Takayama's Sanmachi are. There's no strict building code enforcing historical aesthetics. Residents have modernized however they've seen fit — aluminum sash windows replacing wooden ones, corrugated metal roofing over original tile. Some purists find this disappointing. I find it honest. This is what lived-in history looks like.

A few residents maintain their properties with evident pride. On the backstreet that runs above Daisan-zaka, one house has a meticulously restored wooden porch with original turned-wood railings, potted plants arranged seasonally, and a hand-lettered sign asking visitors (politely, in Japanese only) not to photograph the interior. Respect that. These aren't attractions. These are people's homes.

Some houses have been converted into small businesses — a leather craftsman on one lane, a watercolor artist's studio on another. Most keep irregular hours and have no English signage. If a door is open and you see goods displayed, it's fine to enter. Say "shitsurei shimasu" (excuse me for intruding) and browse quietly.

The population here is aging and declining, as it is across Hokkaido. Some of these houses will be empty within a decade. Walk these streets now.

## A Quiet Walking Route: Slope by Slope Without the Crowds

Here's a concrete walking route that takes about 75 minutes at a slow pace, avoids every major tourist site, and covers the best of the backstreets.

**Start:** Jujigai tram stop (十字街電停, Jujigai dentei). Take tram line 5 from Hakodate Station — it's ¥210 flat fare, pay when you exit.

**First leg:** From Jujigai, walk uphill on Daisan-zaka (大三坂). This slope is less famous than Hachiman-zaka but arguably prettier — stone-paved, tree-lined, with the Catholic church at the top. But don't go to the top. Halfway up, take the first narrow lane to your left (south). This leads you into the residential backstreets behind the church.

**Second leg:** Follow this lane south and slightly uphill. You'll pass the stone-walled houses described earlier. The lane curves and connects to a set of concrete steps — take them up. At the top, you'll be on a ridge path that runs roughly parallel to the slope streets below but above them. On clear days, you can see the port through gaps between rooftops.

**Third leg:** Continue south along the ridge until you reach Aoyagi-zaka (青柳坂), a steep, quiet slope that descends toward the Hakodate-yama ropeway lower station area. Instead of descending, cross it and continue on the ridge path. You'll pass the old foreigners' cemetery (外国人墓地, gaikokujin bochi) — worth a five-minute detour for the sea views alone. Admission is free.

**Final leg:** Descend via Funami-zaka (船見坂), a residential slope with almost no foot traffic, back down to the tram line. Catch the tram at Suehiro-cho (末広町) back to the station.

**Pro tip:** Do this route between 2:00 and 4:00 PM. Morning light is flat on these west-facing slopes. Afternoon sun hits the facades directly and turns the old wood golden. Avoid Monday and Tuesday when the few small galleries along the route tend to close.

## Late Afternoon Light and the Backstreet Cafés Worth Lingering In

The golden hour in Motomachi is genuinely special. Because the neighborhood faces west over the port, late afternoon sun pours directly down the slopes, casting long shadows from the stone walls and lighting up the weatherboard facades in shades of amber and warm gray. This is when the backstreets are at their most photogenic — and their most peaceful, because the day-trip tourists are already lining up at the ropeway for the night view.

Settle into one of the backstreet cafés instead.

**Café TUTU (カフェ チュチュ)** sits on a backstreet near the top of Daisan-zaka in a converted Taisho-era house. The owner roasts beans in small batches — a hand-pour coffee is ¥500, and she serves a simple cheesecake (¥400) that's dense and barely sweet in the Hokkaido style. Seating is maybe ten people. No Wi-Fi password is posted, but ask and she'll write it on a napkin. Closed Wednesdays.

**Romantico Romantica** is a slightly eccentric antique-filled café in a Western-style house on the lane behind the Orthodox Church. Coffee runs ¥550-650, and the interior looks like a Victorian parlor collided with a Showa-era kissaten. The owner is a Hakodate history enthusiast who will talk at length about the neighborhood if you show genuine interest — and he can manage basic English.

For something less caffeinated, **Tea Shop Yuki (夕陽)** near Funami-zaka serves Japanese teas and a small selection of wagashi (Japanese sweets, ¥350-500 with tea) in a room with original wooden floorboards that creak in a way that feels intentional. Afternoon sets with a seasonal sweet and matcha are ¥750.

Don't rush to Mount Hakodate for sunset. Sit by a window in one of these places and watch the light do what it does to a 150-year-old street. You'll remember it longer than the view from the top.

**Local secret:** If you're in Motomachi past 5:00 PM in autumn or winter, walk to the top of any slope and look west. The sun sets directly into the Tsugaru Strait, and on clear evenings the silhouette of Shimokita Peninsula in Aomori Prefecture is visible across the water. Most Hakodate visitors never see this because they're facing the opposite direction, staring at the city lights from the mountaintop. The locals know which view is better.