Trains, planes and more damn planes

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We made a fairly early start as we had seats on the 9.30am bullet train back to Tokyo so we grabbed a few edible supplies at the station (pringles, macadamia nuts with crunchy cheese, and some green beans that tasted like mushy peas) and hopped aboard). The journey was uneventful which is how I like them and Mark managed to grab some better pictures of Mt Fuji.

The lack of events ended once we arrived at the airport however. The departure board displayed our flight to Kushiro in Hokkaido as 'check-in unavailable at this time' and several other flights on the board either delayed or subject to weather conditions. Tokyo was sunny but our flight was eventually cancelled due to the huge piles of snow at Kushiro airport.  We took the decision to transfer our flight to Sapporo. 

Also in Hokkaido, Sapporo is home to Sapporo beer (good thing) and about 300 odd kilometres from where our hotel was (bad thing). However, after an hour in the air, our captain decided to return to Tokyo so we were back to square one again.

After a frantic think and web search, we decided to give up on Hokkaido and try to get on the next flight to Kyushu, a southern island hence no snow! When we suggested this though, eyebrows were seriously raised and an additional cost of £970 was asked for. We therefore scrapped this idea!

After consulting the weather reports, we decided to have one last shot at getting to Hokkaido so we transferred yet again to the 7.30pm Sapporo flight. To cut what has strangely become a very long story short, we finally made it to Sapporo at 9.30pm. Due to the circumstances, we went straight to the information desk (yes, I know, shock horror) and booked a night in the nearest accommodation they could find us. Two stops away on the train in Chitose, a pleasant enough hotel although to be honest, as long as it had four walls and a bed, we were happy at this point in the proceedings. A quick trip to the local 7-11 (your favourite shop and mine) for some surprisingly good Japanese 'pot noodles' equivalents and a well deserved beer or two, and we were settled for the night.

I managed to email our original hotel from Tokyo airport to say we would be a day late so hopefully things would be fine in that respect, fingers crossed again. Mark tried to call the car rental to cancel but they did not speak great English so gave us another number to call. This number wasn't recognised so we emailed them in the hope of avoiding the no-show charge. 

So here we finally are, yes it's seriously snowy but so are the snow ploughs and the roads are clear. Tune in next time to find out if we actually make it to Kushiro and other freezing things!

TTFN, Lisa & Mark x
P.S. Writing this in cold car waiting for the birder to return from an owl hunt - we were due to head back for dinner at 5pm, it's now 5.15pm. If I miss my homemade dinner again, I will not be a happy bunny!

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