Hakodate Christmas Fantasy

Each December, the waterfront at Hakodate's Bay Area is the site of a large Christmas tree, often a fir tree gifted from a Canadian city through a sister-city relationship, lit nightly from the beginning of the month. Soup bars and warm drink stalls cluster around the tree, and the illuminations extend along the historic red brick warehouses of the Kanemori complex nearby. The event is short, essentially a large outdoor lighting display with seasonal food, but the waterfront location and the harbor reflections give it a genuine warmth. It runs through Christmas Eve and is most atmospheric in the evening cold when the bay is still and the lights multiply across the water.