Spaceships! Battles! Squid! This Hakodate tourism video has it all!

by Chris MaGee

Squid aliens! Giant neolithic statues! Spaceships! Volcanoes erupting! 60-metre tall towers coming to life! Man, all tourism videos should be like this! That's exactly what you get from this video produced by the northern Japanese city of Hakodate to encourage people to come spend and spend their tourist dollars there.

A port city on the very southern tip of Hokkaido, Hakodate's hostory goes all the way back to the 15th-century, but in all that time it's never been what you would call a tourist hot spot. It's got a big mountain nicknamed "Mount Cow's Back" because, well, it looks like a cow's back, the 60-metre tall Goryokaku Observation Tower.... It's famous for it's ramen made with squid... and that's about it. So how are you going to come and convince people to come to climb up a tower, eat squid and look at a mountain? By throwing in an alien invasion and some old fashioned kaiju action!

The video below is only the first of three parts, but the basic premise is that 100 aliens surveyed said that Hakodate is their number one choice for an alien invasion, and in this case the aliens are pissed off squid who don't like their earthly brethren being chomped up by the locals. To stop these squid from taking over Goryokaku Tower comes to life, as does a giant 3,200-year-old Neolithic clay figure... and well, it's best to watch the videos to see what goes down.

Again, this is only part one. For parts two and three head over to Pink Tentacle.