Best time to visit Hakodate

Japan · East Asia

All twelve months scored on daily temperature, rainfall, humidity and holiday crowding.

The year in Hakodate

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Sweet spot
Good
OK
Avoid
Busy

Go in Jun, Sep or Oct — these months score within a whisker of each other; 19C max, 9 rainy days. May is the next best.

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Things to do in Hakodate

Mount Hakodate Mountain in Hokkaido, Japan
Hakodate Orthodox Church Building in Hakodate, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan
Kanemori Red Brick Warehouses These warehouses built at the end of the Meiji era now house a variety of commercial facilities, as well as restaurants serving seafood.
Hakodate Jōmon Culture Center Hakodate Jōmon Culture Center, Minamikayabe, about 60 minutes by bus from Hakodate Station.
Hakodate Park Western-style park in Hakodate, Hokkaidō, Japan
Hakodate City Museum of Northern Peoples Museum in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan
Hakodate City Museum Museum in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan

Tours and tickets in Hakodate

Each site opens on its own search: choose your dates there. A few open on their home page, where you type the place too. Links marked Ad pay us a commission if you book, at no extra cost to you; most pay nothing, and what a site pays never decides whether it is listed or where. How we rank

Sights and their lines from Wikivoyage (Hakodate), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, and Wikidata; in order of how often each one's Wikipedia article was read on phones in the last 12 months.

Month by month

Month	Max °C	Rain days	Humidity	Sun h/day	Verdict	Why
Jan	0°	7d	73%	6.6h	avoid	bitter cold: 0C daily max
Feb	1°	7d	71%	7.5h	avoid	bitter cold: 1C daily max
Mar	6°	10d	73%	8.5h	ok	6C max, 10 rainy days
Apr	11°	9d	74%	9.3h	okbusy	busier than usual
May	16°	10d	80%	9.5h	good	16C max, 10 rainy days
Jun	19°	9d	84%	9.6h	sweet spot	19C max, 9 rainy days
Jul	24°	8d	88%	8.9h	goodbusy	busier than usual
Aug	25°	10d	84%	8.2h	good	25C max, 10 rainy days
Sep	22°	8d	79%	8.5h	sweet spot	22C max, 8 rainy days
Oct	16°	8d	75%	8.0h	sweet spot	16C max, 8 rainy days
Nov	10°	8d	73%	6.8h	ok	10C max, 8 rainy days
Dec	2°	9d	72%	6.2h	avoid	bitter cold: 2C daily max

Rain days are the days with at least 1 mm of rain, as a weather station counts them.

Weather read at the centre, by the bay, 8 km from the airport (HKD): ten years of ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis, through Open-Meteo's open data.

A busy month is a crowded one, not a bad one — usually it is crowded because the weather is good. It is flagged rather than scored down, and crowds alone never make a month “avoid”: that is reserved for weather worth skipping.

How busy it gets

Busiest in April, July and December; quietest in January and September.

Then and now

Hakodate's March days now average 6.2°C, 4.0°C warmer than in 1981–1990. 10 of 12 months are clearly warmer.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
1981–90	-1.8°	-1.2°	2.2°	7.5°	12.8°	16.7°	20.4°	24.0°	20.6°	14.1°	6.5°	1.2°
2017–26	0.1°	0.9°	6.2°	11.1°	15.8°	19.4°	23.7°	25.1°	22.5°	16.3°	9.6°	2.0°
Change	+1.9°	+2.2°	+4.0°	+3.6°	+3.0°	+2.7°	+3.3°	+1.1°	+1.8°	+2.2°	+3.1°	+0.8°

The average daily high, month by month, for the nearest ERA5 grid cell. Bold is a clear change; grey is within the ordinary spread between years. Every destination, ranked.

Getting there

How far Hakodate is depends on where you set off from — the months above do not.

Before you go

Type A and B plugs at 100 V. Drives on the left. The currency is the Yen. No UK Foreign Office advice against travel. Everything for Japan: cost of living, languages, emergency numbers and health.

Being there

On arrival

Paying — Cards are widely taken in cities, but carry cash for small restaurants, inns and rural areas. Suica and PASMO also pay in many shops, and PayPay QR codes are common.
UPI, for visitors from India — Not accepted for paying here; bring a card that works abroad.
Tipping — Not done in restaurants or taxis; some hotels and restaurants add a 10% service charge.

Getting around Hakodate

Apps — Rides: GO, DiDi, S.RIDE, Uber. Maps: Google Maps, Apple Maps. Messages: LINE. Ride apps here hail ordinary licensed taxis; private-car rideshare is limited to small trials.

Hakodate is connected by two (practically one that branches to the SW of the city) streetcar lines and roughly two-hundred bus lines. More on Wikivoyage

From the Wikivoyage article on Hakodate, written by travellers and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Help

Emergency — police 110 · ambulance and fire 119.
TravelCharika is not an emergency service: we cannot call for help or send anyone. Numbers can change; if one fails, ask someone local or your hotel.

Put together by hand from the sources listed, checked 7 October 2026. Apps, cards and rules change, so check before you rely on one.

Sources (21)

Hakodate in pictures

St Johns Church Hakodate Hokkaido Japan01n — i

663highland, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

View from Mount Hakodate Japan01o — i

663highland, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Hakodate Magistrates Office Building May 2016 2 — i

Alexander Klink, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Hakodate Bay seen from Mount Hakodate in sunset time — i

掬茶, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Hokkaido Hakodate night view xl — i

洞内定晴, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What Hakodate is like

Hakodate (函館) is a port city in Southern Hokkaidō, Japan. Separated by the 20-km long Tsugaru Strait (津軽海峡) from Honshu, Japan's main island, the city has naturally been seen as an entrance to Hokkaido. Like Kanazawa and Nagasaki, Hakodate is one of the hidden gems of Japanese tourism. More on Wikivoyage

Worth seeing: Mount Hakodate (函館山 hakodate-yama, 334m) (A ropeway will take you up for ¥780/1280 one-way/return. There are also buses (by Hakodate Bus) from platform 4 of the main bus station in front of Hakodate Station in summer… More on Wikivoyage
Worth doing: Port Festival (函館港まつり Hakodate Minato Matsuri). annually from August 1st to 5th. More on Wikivoyage
Getting in: Hakodate Airport (HKD IATA 函館空港), 〒042-0952 北海道函館市高松町511 (on the exit of Prefectural Route 63; follow the oval and on the left side). First daily departure: 07:35; last daily departure: 19:45. More on Wikivoyage
Staying safe: Visitors unused to icy conditions should be careful in winter of the icy conditions, particularly of black ice. Cars may skid in the streets and pedestrians can fall victim to it on the sidewalks. More on Wikivoyage

From the Wikivoyage article on Hakodate, written by travellers and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; the full article has far more. The numbers above are measured; this is experience.

Around Hakodate

Also in Japan

Nearby

Kind of place

Hakodate is in Japan, East Asia. Distances are great-circle, so a short one can still be a long way round.

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