Japan's Winter Wonderland

So the holidays were over, but my friends and I still had a few extra days of winter break, so we decided to head up to one of Japan's most beautiful spots, northern Hokkaido!


北海道 Hokkaido (lit. translated as Northern Sea Road)

Hokkaido itself looks like this, but put in the perspective of Japan as a whole:


Yeah, it's pretty far north. On the 43rd parallel, actually. That's like, on par with Canada. Needless to say, it was very, very cold. As you can see from our first glimpse of Hokkaido, from the airplane:

Yeah, that's a lake. And yeah, I think it's partially frozen over. D;

Speaking of airplanes, the Japanese security system is incredibly lax compared to the US system. I mean, Japan is not the US, but they're a major country in the world as well. Shouldn't they be more careful? They don't even check IDs when going through security. x_x; Also, they allow you to bring water bottles and lighters through security, which is nice because then you don't have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for a drink. But lighters. o_O; Dangerous.

Anyway, more snow shots from post-arrival:

That second one is literally a pile of snow by the railroad tracks, which you can't see over because it's so high. x_x

So first on our trip we flew to Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido (you can see it if you scroll up to the maps). Actually Sapporo's airport is a good 45 minutes away from Sapporo by train (similar to Narita Airport being 1 hour away from Tokyo), so first we had to travel to the city by train.

Sapporo is famous for a bunch of things, but of course, internationally, it's famous for one really big thing:

Sapporo Beer!

So naturally, our first stop as mostly beer-loving Americans (except myself of course), was the Sapporo Beer Museum!

Billy was happy.

The Factory includes, well, a factory, as well as a tour (where photographs are not allowed), free beer tasting (plus free soft drinks, which I took advantage of xD), a souvenir shop, and I think in seasons where snow is not abundant, a garden as well. It's actually called Sapporo Beer Garden. xD Anyway, the tour itself was conducted in Japanese, only parts of which I understood, so it wasn't that interesting. But now I can say I've been inside! :D

The beer factory was on our way from the airport to the city of Sapporo, so we stopped in the middle. So once we were done at the beer factory, we hopped back on the train towards Sapporo!

札幌 Sapporo

Sapporo is quite a beautiful city, especially at night with the snow. It's not nearly as big as Tokyo, maybe about the size of Shizuoka City, although I'm not sure because once we got there, we were so tired that we didn't feel like doing much. xD; Our first stop was dinner, because we were all starving. xD Keila, Heather, and I shared a hotpot dish called, shabu shabu (しゃぶしゃぶ), where you receive a pot of boiling water and throw vegetables, meat, noodles, and tofu into it. It was delicious.

In shabu shabu, you take this:

And turn it into this:

The meat gets dipped into this really delicious sauce--it's amazing on a really cold, cold night!

Although it was quite expensive, I also tried out some apparently indigenous samurai pudding, which looked like this:

侍プリン
It was pretty good, but kind of tasted pretty much like flan with a bit of bitter coffee flavoring on the bottom. It was actually really bitter, but mixed with the pudding it was good.

Billy and Mio enjoyed Hokkaido crabs and a sashimi rice bowl, respectively:

Neither were very large, and were unfortunately quite expensive. Later Billy went and enjoyed some Sapporo ramen to fill him up, which looks as so:

He said it was the most delicious ramen he'd ever had. xD

Then some of my friends went up into an observation tower to see the city, but visibility was low and it cost a sizeable amount of money (about 700 yen, I think, so about 8$) so I declined to go up. I did, however, steal some photos from Facebook. :D

Then after that we returned to the hotel for some nice hot showers and then SLEEP! We had an early morning the next day, having to be in the hotel lobby at 7:50 to catch our tour bus to Otaru, a little town about an hour from Sapporo to the west.

Otaru is a really cute town. It's famous for cheesecake and chocolate, which put me in heaven, a little. Unfortunately, that chocolate and cheesecake was EXTREMELY expensive (let's say 1,000 yen for a box of chocolate - about $12) so I declined to purchase any of the really yummy fudge kind, but I had some samples, and man were they delicious. They also had this really cute music box store, which had so many varieties and shapes and sizes. It was fun to look through. They even had some Jpop ones, which I took the liberty of trying out. :)

GIANT frozen crabs for sale...approximately $75. Also, the chocolate and cheesecake restaurant.

Some of the older style architecture of Otaru

Us posed in front of the music box shop. looking cold, and the inside of the music box shop.

Cute (but expensive) glass design cups and a statue made out of candy in a chocolate shop.

So, according to the tour bus we had 1.5 hours to spend in Otaru, so we just went around looking at shops, because that's mostly was Otaru is about: chocolate and cheesecake, ice cream (if you can believe it), glass art, and other shops. It was a really cute place, with some older, Western style architecture, and if wasn't really, really, really cold, I'd have really, really, really liked it.

After we finished at Otaru we hopped on the bus again and rode for an hour to lunch! I had kani meshi, or crab meat over rice!

It was really good :F

And then we hoppped on the bus with Hakodate as our destination! If you scroll up a little take a look at the map, you'll notice that Hakodate is really, really far from Sapporo. Indeed, on a good day it takes maybe 5 or 6 hours to get there by car. But because of the bad weather, it took us a whopping seven hours to get there! Oh man, it was rough. But somehow we managed. And anyway we were able to see some great snow covered scenery, which I'm sure would be even more beautiful in spring and summer.

A GIANT crab we found at one of the rest stops. He was a monster. xD

And we had blue skies for just a moment!

We also stopped a kelp museum (o_O) but we were running late for our schedule, so we got there after closing. But they gave us free candy made out of kelp! :D And samples and stuff. So. It was good. Although I'm not sure what a kelp museum is supposed to be about. There's only so much about kelp I want to know. xD; But Billy slipped in unseen and saw that it was sculptures or something made from kelp? I don't know. lol. But hey, free candy!

In any case the seven hour bus ride was worth it because Hakodate is a really wonderful place. It's a city, but it has a small town feel to it, with many older buildings, and the main form of transportation was a street car much like those of San Francisco, except not open because, man, would that be cold.

Hakodate night view from the bus. This is the best picture I had. xD

However, when we first arrived, it was nighttime, so we went straight to our hotel, checked in, and headed for our room, which was Japanese style!

Closets and the futons set up. :)

We also had a great view!

The hotel was like a Japanese style hotel...it had lots of Japanese features but was still a Western style hotel. It was really interesting!

After dropping off our stuff in our room, being the hungry beasts that we were, we ran down to dinner, which was a SUPER DELICIOUS buffet (which was included in our hotel costs), and which had GRAPES. omg It was fantastic. You can find grapes in Japan but they come at $8-10 a bunch, so I never buy them. But they were there in the buffet. So delicious. *_*

My tray. I ate it all. And I went back for more. :F

After that we went right off to onsen (hot springs) to enjoy some hot soaking, and then we returned to the room, played some jenga, and went to bed. We rose kind of early (not as early as we should have) and went to breakfast, which was another delightful buffet, and then we headed off to explore Hakodate before our flight home.

Those ducks must be cold.

A natural hotspring for foot soaking. How interesting!

First we hopped on the street car:

To get off at nearly the last stop and walk up this hill through the snow:

So that we could ride this cable car up to the famous panoramic view of Hakodate, which at night is supposed to be fantastic:

Unfortunately, at that time the snow was pretty strong and we couldn't see too much, so we were a bit despondent about what we could see.

But then all of a sudden, the sun came out just as we were about to leave, affording us some great views!

So we got to see the biggest spot in Hakone, the view from up top of Hakodate Mountain, which was great. Thanks, sun!

After that, we moved onto a nearby shrine, which looked REALLY cool in all the snow.

We were pretty hungry by then, so we went down hill and caught the cable car to the main part of town, where we ate at a Chinese restaurant. Hakodate, like most of Hokkaido, is really famous for seafood, but since two of our friends don't like seafood very much, we opted for something else. We made a good choice in this Chinese restaurant. It was delicious! I had beef and green peppers with rice, soup, pickled vegetables (which I gave to Billy because I'm not a fan), salad, and date pudding jello thing. xD It was awesome, for only like 800 yen if I remember correctly.

Before eating we debated a lot about where to go until we decided on that Chinese restaurant, which as I said was a good choice. But afterwards we passed this restaurant, which is famous because apparently the members of the Japanese rock band GLAY, who are from Hokkaido (and who are an extremely popular group) really like this restaurant. Looking back, it might have been a good idea to eat there simply for the novelty of it, but oh well. Next time. :)

The main part of town also has this large observation tower, which you can climb and get another great panoramic view. We had already done the cable car, however, so Keila and I declined to go up, but there were a few things and lots of shops inside to look at, so it was okay.

That marks the end of our trip! We then headed back to the hotel to grab our luggage, caught a shuttle bus to the airport, and flew home. It was overall a great trip, well worth the $500 it cost us. :) I also got these great omiyage, or souvenirs. Souvenirs in Japan are typically not trinkets or keychains or other things (although to appeal to foreign travelers they have those too), but rather food. For example, Hokkaido is famous for Shiroi Koibito (white lovers---the blue box), which are white chocolate and chocolate cookie sandwiches. They are AMAZING. I also purchased some Hakodate Romance Sandwiches (the dark blue box), which are basically wafer sandwich cookies. Not quite as delicious, but still yummy. And finally, I purchased some white chocolate from Otaru, because, well, I can never resist chocolate. :)

So that's our Hokkaido experience! It was a great time, and well worth the money. I recommend going on tours through JR Tours (JapanRail) if you can get someone to speak Japanese to help, because you can get some great deals depending on the timing of your trip.

The next adventure I have in store for you is Tokyo Disney Sea, so stay tuned! :)