Our 8-day Hokkaido Trip (Spring in the North)
(15-22 May 2007 - Free-wheeling Tour)
Hokkaido is one of the four largest islands, the northern-most and major farmland in Japan. Hokkaido is famous for its beef, seafood, cheese and other milk products. Its development and urbanization into modernity has been vast and fast since the completion of the Tsugaru Kaikyu Tunnel, which connects Hokkaido to the main island, Honsu, where seats the Capital of Japan. With the fast and efficient rail and road systems, the journey between Sapporo and Tokyo can be barely under four hours by bullet trains. The last time I walked on the land of Hokkaido was a quarter of a century ago. After this long lapse, it is time now to go back there again, to take a look around and pick up my sweet memories left behind in those good old days.
In April 2007, my wife and I started planning an 8-day free-wheeling holiday to Sapporo and its adjacent areas.After making all necessary preparation like gathering information and maps from the Japanese National Tourist Office in Hong Kong, buying our return air passage, checking the weathers, packing up our gear and all other necessities, we were on our way, in the early hours on 15 May 2007.
15/May (cloudy sky with cool weather, no rains) - We arrived at New Chitose Airport, Sapporo shortly after noon on the same day.From there, a 36-minute trip by train took us to the heart of Sapporo, the Sapporo Station. At the station, we visited the Tourist Information Centre within the Station building and obtained supplementary information we needed. Then, we walked to our pre-booked hotel, the Keio Plaza Sapporo, which was only two blocks to the west or 4-5 minutes on foot from the Station.After checking into the hotel, we headed back to Sapporo Station to start our exploration of the city.
In front of the Station, there was a large open area surrounded by tall buildings, with many banks and other business institutes rising from the ground.There was a huge underground city below, which was connected to the Station to the north, and the Subway lines to the south. In the underground city, there were alleys leading to and from different directions. Department stores, fashion boutiques, supermarkets, shops selling all kinds of everything, restaurants and other you-name-its, were found in there.Tourists can easily get lost in the alleys.Nevertheless, one can come up to the surface and find out his whereabouts by looking it up on a Sapporo street-map.That was what we did to find our way out, anyway!
Coming out from the underground, a 10-minute walk brought us to the Clock Tower and the O-Dori Park, both being the city symbols of Sapporo, dating back to more than a century back into the city’s history.The 1.5 kilometer long park divided the city into ‘north’ and ‘south’, with flowers blooming everywhere as it was about the time to start the season of Spring. Within sight were two (maybe more) water fountains and the tall TV Tower standing out tranquilly in the background.Needless to say, all were too beautiful and fascinating. Strolling along the city streets was a real pleasure, as they were so clean.Although Sapporo is the largest city in Hokkaido, yet it is not as busy as in Tokyo or Osaka. A little further south, we came to “Tanuki Oji”, which was a long covered walking street (no entry to vehicles), lying east-west, and divided into several sections.Shops selling all kinds of things, from daily commodities to avant-garde clothing and items, lined on both sides of the street. On the eastern end and across the road, there was the well-known “Nijo Seafood Market" with tens of shops selling sea-products - live, cooked and dried seafood.Huge spider- and hairly-crabs appeared to be the main themes in the market’s shops, while different species of shellfish and fish for raw-serving were also too many.
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Two blocks further down the road was the famous night-life or entertainment district of "Susukino". We arrived there at the early evening, numerous huge and bright neon signages of all colours prevailed the faces of most of the buildings in the area.
After a sumptuous dinner of the famous Hokkaido beef steak, we strolled back to our hotel to prepare ourselves for the next day’s trip to Jozankei Hot-Spring Valley.
16-18/May (cloudy sky with passing light rains or drizzles on-and-off during these 3 days) – In the morning of 16/May, we visited the old Hokkaido Government House and its beautiful garden attached. Sakuras, daffodils, tulips and other colourful flowers were everywhere, while willow trees were hanging low onto the water ponds. The place was so beautiful and scenic that we had tens of electronic images taken into the memory card and tape in our movie-cum-camera.
By noon, we had Italian food as lunch, which was so genuine and inexpensive. After lunch, we walked back to Sapporo Station to board our pre-booked coach to our hotel in Jozankei Valley. The coach departed at 2:00 p.m. and arrived at Manseikaku Hotel shortly after 3.00 o’clock. The hotel was a resort type structure, where every guest changed themselves into Japanese styled pajamas, to relax in the vacation atmosphere. We found open-side kiosks with hot-spring water fountains here and there on the road-side for foot-soaking, at no cost to its users. This was particularly good for us after a long tiring walk.
There were light rains and drizzles on-and-off most of the times during our stay in Jozankei Valley.The weather was a bit cool in the morning and during the night. The feeling of strolling in the scenic Japanese country paths was marvelous and romantic.The long awaited moment of tranquility had come after long years of hard working and boring city life. When feeling tired of walking, we just sat down on one the road side hot-spring fountains, taking off our shoes and soaked our feet in the hot spring-water, while our eyes gazed at the snow-capped mountains in the distant field with full bloom Sakuras on the fore-ground. The meals in the hotel were Japanese styled - good and tasty but in small portions. We had a peaceful and uneventful, yet romantic time in Jozankei Valley.
18/May (cloudy with drizzle) – The coach departed at 10:00 and arrived at Sapporo City, stopping at the Clock Tower shortly before noon.From there we walked straight to ‘Nijo Seafood Market’ to have our Hokkaido seafood lunch. Crabs and other shellfishes for which Hokkaido is famous, were our target food in Sapporo.
In the afternoon, we window-shopped around in several large department stores.At dusk, we ate French bread, cheese and some-meat as our dinner for the night.
19/May (cloudy sky with light rains in the morning and occasional sunny periods in the afternoon) - We joined our pre-booked whole-day tour to Furano, to see the countryside of Hokkaido. The tour coach was a large limousine, yet with only 15 people in this tour - just a small group owing to Furano not being in the flower-season yet.Except us and a young Taiwanese couple with their young daughter, all others were Japanese.The coach departed Sapporo Station at 08:35 as scheduled.It took about two hours to arrive at Asahigawa with one 15-minute stop on the way for washrooms.Our coach went through the outskirt of the city of Asahigawa without stopping, and we could only see the views through the coach windows.After Asahigawa, the bus stopped at several scenic spots, each about 15 to 20 minutes for photo taking.There was explanation of the itinerary all the way by the pretty Japanese guide (lady), but in Japanese language only.Without knowing what she was talking about, we nevertheless enjoyed the views in our own way.
At midday, we stopped at a resort hotel somewhere in Furano for lunch. Again, the food was excellent but in small portions.My wife said this was one of the best fried salmon meal we’d had, and the ice-cream and coffee were excellent too.The cost for this set of lunch had already been included in the tour price.
Furano is for its continuous multi-coloured flower fields - plain after plains and hill after hills.But, we didnt see too many of them, as they were not in the flowering season yet, while full-blooms of Sakura were still everywhere.The flower fields where lavenders and other flowers were supposed to be, were now butting up, neatly ploughed or under preparation for the blooming season in the coming Hokkaido’s summer.Although there were no lavenders, yet the places were so scenic that we didn’t feel missing anything at all.
After lunch, we continued our journey to see several more scenic spots, factory outlets and souvenir shops, somewhere in the middle of Hokkaido.Amongst which was a Photo Exhibition Pavillion(拓真館). Showing therein were hundreds of pictures of Hokkaido scenaries taken in different seasons. A small admission fee was required to gain entry into the Pavillion. After that, the coach took us back to Sapporo in early evening.After a long tiring day, we had a light meal before going to bed and prepared ourselves for another long day to Otaru.
20/May (Sunday, cloudy in the morning and sunny periods in the afternoon) ---
After breakfast, we first went to the Tourist Information Centre at the Station to buy a day-pass - the “Otaru Welcome Pass”, which allowed us to unlimited trips on trains between Sapporo and Otaru today, in addition to another one-day ticket on subway trips within the city’s limits on another day.Then, we started our Otaru tour by taking a rapid train from Sapporo.The journey went through a number of small townships and along the northern shore of Hokkaido.Before arrving Otaru(小樽), we stopped at a place called Otaru Chikko (小樽築港) where there was a large 4 or 5-storey factory-outlet complex.The shops in there sold mainly clothing and all sorts of other things imported from China.Things were cheap in there, as compared with other places in Japan.We hanged around in there for about an hour and then we continued our journey to Otaru.
Otaru is a small seaside town, built in late 19th Century. It prospered as a trans-shipment centre at the turn of the 19th/20th century after the Meiji Reform (明治維新), because it was the only seaport for maritime transport on the northern shore of Hokkaido and there were no road links with other parts of Japan in those days.
Nowadays, it is chiefly a tourist town. Nostalgic and ornamental glass-wares and seafood are the main produces here. The houses appeared to be ancient but still looked good and smart in this town. Souvenir glass blowing shops were seen working-live here and there in town. We chose to have beef-steak with salad bar lunch instead of seafood, because the prices of seafood were rocket high here in Otaru.
After lunch our slow-pace walk along the streets gave us the feeling of being in the nostalgic old Japan a century ago.Nothing much had changed in this town, since my last visit to Hokkaido a quarter of a century ago.Before returning to Sapporo, we stopped one more time at Sapporo Chikko for some fruits and snacks.
On arriving Sapporo in the evening, we had a great Japanese Ramen (noodles) with oysters near the Station as our evening meal, before closing the day.Again, this was one of the most delicious oyster noodles we’d ever had.
21/May (Partly cloudy with sunny periods and warm ) - We woke up seeingblue skies with plenty of sunshine outside the window.After breakfast, we used the subway day-pass to hop around the city from place to place, district to district. Our first stop was the Nakashima Park (中島公園).It was a medium size park with numerous flowers, trees and plants. Mandarin ducks were seen swimming gracefully and love-making in the lake. Small bridges with streams running underneath were fabulously beautiful, while willow trees were hanging low just above the waterline; and other nicely shaped trees fringed the ponds in the park. At noon we left for our lunch.In the afternoon, we went from one place (district) to another until sunset. We had coffee with tiramisu cakes at "Starbucks" as our tea-break in mid-afternoon.
22/May ( Sunny with blue sky throughout the day)As this was the last day of our trip, we got up early and went to the old Government House’s garden one more time, to say my “sayonara” to the sakuras there.We took more pictures of the place. Then we returned to the hotel to check out and left. We boarded the same train which took us here, and arrived at the airport by noon.Sayonara…Japanese good-bye. On the same day evening, we arrived home in Hong Kong and returned to reality.
All in all, Sapporo is a nice modern city and Hokkaido is simply beautiful, yet much cleaner and tranquiller than other big cities in Japan.With its efficient transport system, scenic places are just handily one or two hours away, unless one really wants to travel afar into the distant wilderness, which are to the north and on the east side of Hokkaido.The setting-out of Sapporo City is just like a checker board with the streets running most in the north-south and east-west directions and numbered in an orderly fashion. One can find no difficulty to go anywhere within the city and not getting lost.Personal safety is well assured.Clean streets are everywhere one can go without having to worry about getting soiled.It is very recommendable to friends who are looking for a peaceful countryside and modern city vacation.You’ve got it here in Sapporo, Hokkaido !!!