Blogs from Hokkaido, Japan, Asia - page 21

We travelled from Tokyo to Hakodate, south of Hokkaido, via train. It required abt 7 hours and 1 train transfer. An unsual thing which happened during the train was that, at one point, we had turn the seats to face another direction coz the train would be travelling in another direction. Train couldn't u-turn so passengers would have to get up move a bit to be more comfortable. Hakodate seemed like a pretty quiet town.. perhaps that's why it had recorded advertisement playing along the streets and music at traffic lights. We didn't see many ppl around town on the first night there. And, the food establishment and touristy areas were pretty empty. Where's everyone? Perhaps it was weekday so lesser crowd. Our lodging here was Fitness 330 Hotel. Weird name for a hotel but it ... read more

The BEST holiday I've been on yet. Ever.... read more

Our caught an early flight from Haneda Airport(Tokyo) to Chitose Airport(Hokkaido). Woke up really early like 4am. Realise the streets of Ikkebukuro can be quite sleazy at this time. the previous night we did some shopping or rather, Xia did some shopping around Sunshine City. Did some people watching at one of the busy junctions before calling it a night. Quite a busy place actually Ikebukuru with all the Pachinko parlours, food places and the working class thronging the streets at night. Quite excited about this leg of the trip at Hokkaido cause it would be my first road trip ! Let our beaten legs get a rest and let our wheels do the walking. We got ourselves a Toyoto Vitz (Think it is a Yaris actually). Fiddled with the GPS for a while and ... read more

So yesterday was my first full day here in Sapporo, and I gotta say this is a great city. Sapporo is the 5th largest city in Japan, and one of the newest. Which means one very big thing - streets here actually make SENSE. Instead of wonderful naming like bank street because 50 years ago there may have been a bank, its grid based and divided into N/S/E/W and how many blocks away from city center. Anyways, I arrived here by train and met up with a guy named Neil, from Chicago. Nice chap. Asked him if he was staying at the hostel too and sure enough he was. So we head that way, I find out he:s up here a couple of days while his friend he was visiting is off working. Before this he ... read more

(Day 160 on the road)I finally had the hiking experience I had been looking for for such a long time - the Daisetsuzan Grand Traverse, from Asahi-dake onsen to Shirogane onsen. Up north in Japan on Hokkaido island, in the remote national park of Daisetsuzan, I spent five full days hiking of and camping in almost complete solitude. The trek is challenging and long, and temperatures dropped to below zero at night. But the biggest problem actually was access to clean water - at this time of the year (early September), water was extremely scarce up there, and it did actually cut my hike short by one day. If you are contemplating doing this hike, read on for some tips or email me for more information. I found the only hiking book there is about Japan ... read more