I have a daughter studying in Japan as a college student, and she had an interest in seeing the Sapporo Snow Festival. My adult son and I had time to go out, on the rationale that someone who has studied the language for nine years would be an asset in visiting Japan.
**Getting to Japan**
We live in Minnesota, and got a direct Delta flight from MSP to Tokyo’s Haneda airport, round-trip in Premium Select class, for about $5,000. I’m a larger guy, so bigger seats were an asset, and the amenities provided in Premium Select class — slippers, socks, toothbrush and toothpaste, an eye mask, earplugs, etc. — were helpful in getting to sleep. Your beverages and snacks are free, and you have two meals included, one post departure, another pre-arrival, in both directions.
If there was one down side to this flight, it was that in-flight WiFi conked out after we left Alaska’s airspace on the flight to Tokyo. I gather the plane’s satellite Internet access was down. In any case, the WiFi was cheaper on that flight than it was on the return to MSP a week later, but that Internet access worked for the whole flight.
**Hotel Rooms**
My daughter studies in Nagoya University, and we planned to spend two nights in Nagoya to see local sites with her. However, there were no hotels anywhere near her dorm. We concluded it would be better to book a hotel at Nagoya Station, and she could come to us; we’d get her a room. We ended up booking the Marriott Associa hotel, and the rooms were sized more like western hotels. This is definitely a luxury experience, though it was perfectly convenient for us. While I had no phone plan in the US that would let me call them, I was able to reach them through chat on the Marriott app to make sure my daughter would be able to get into the room early.
We had already booked the [Richardson hotel](https://richmondhotel.jp/en/sapporo-odori/) in Sapporo, near Odori park, as we figured the hotels near the Snow Festival would be booked. This hotel is midway between Odori park and the Susukino site for the festival, so we could walk to either one. The hotel was better positioned than I realized: the back entrance is steps away from the escalators to the Pole City underground pedestrian mall, which provides snow/ice/curb-free walking to the subway stations, but you can even walk all the way to the JR station for Nagoya. I would definitely stay there again; the room lighting may have been a bit bland, but we were there to sleep. The staff were very helpful.
We booked the [Karaksa hotel](https://karaksahotels.com/en/tokyostation/) by Tokyo Station for our Tokyo nights. This is a short walk from the North Yaesu exit of the station, and the rooms are beautiful. They also have a breakfast buffet for an extra cost.
Finally, in Nagasaki we booked the [JR Kyushu hotel](https://www.jrk-hotels.co.jp/Nagasaki/en/) in the AMU Plaza which is practically attached to the Nagasaki station. There’s a Marriott that’s closer, but we didn’t need the luxury.
**Travel Logistics**
Once we knew where we were staying and when, the travel in Japan was fairly easy to work out.
We figured we could take the local trains from Haneda to Tokyo station, then catch a Shinkansen to Nagoya. As it happened, Shinagawa station was closer (thanks, Google Maps!). In Nagoya, it was easy to walk down to the elevators that took us to the Marriott’s 15th-floor lobby.
We looked into taking trains to get to Sapporo, but it would eat most of the day, and we could only schedule one night in Sapporo. So we decided to fly from Chubu Centrair airport to New Chitose near Sapporo, as it was a faster trip. We could catch a train from there to Sapporo station. As it happened, there was an airport limousine bus that we booked after getting out of baggage claim, it got us closer to the hotel (though we had to walk the snowy/icy streets for a few blocks), and our luggage rode the bus in the cargo space. We did take the train the next day, though, and it was fine.
We flew from New Chitose to Haneda for the two nights in Tokyo, and caught the local trains to Tokyo Station, then walked to our hotel. Being close to the station was very convenient for us.
We took the train to Nagasaki, so we had one long train trip. What we didn’t realize was that we could only take the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Hakata, then had to change to a regular JR Kyushu train from Hakata to Takeo-onsen, before changing to a Kyushu Shinkansen to get to Nagasaki.
We had used the SmartEX app to book our Shinkansen travel, but it could only get us to Hakata; Google Maps told us the names of the other trains, and I was able to search the web (on my phone) to get to the websites where I could book those trains. I would have to print tickets at Hakata station, though; JR Kyushu doesn’t link to a Suica card or provide a QR code. I wanted to get reserved seats because of our baggage going with us, and it worked very well.
My daughter has been paying cash for her local bus and train travel, so she doesn’t have a Suica card. SmartEX let me designate mine and my son’s Suica cards for admission to the gates for the Shinkansen platforms, but it generated a QR code for my daughter. I was confused, and thought that SmartEX would charge my Suica — even though I’d put my American Express in the app — and I maxed the amount I could add to my virtual Suica (¥20,000). Fortunately, I was able to pay this down at some shops, and ended up with only ¥404 left on it by the end of the trip.
I used Japan Airlines for all our domestic flights in Japan. When we were done in Nagasaki, my son and I flew to Haneda. The JAL ticket counter was able to tag our bags to go to our connecting flight, so our checked bags took care of themselves, which was very nice.
**Networking**
My son’s phone is newer than mine, and an Android, so he was able to get a virtual SIM added to his phone. I have an older iPhone, and got a physical SIM card that gave me data but no voice for ¥6,000 across 8 days. In the airport, WiFi worked fine, so I could access my e-mail and stuff, but I needed to be able to do that while elsewhere in Japan, and the SIM card worked great for that.
I already mentioned that I got the virtual Suica card. This is ridiculously easy to set up, and you should do it before you leave for Japan if you have an iPhone and want to use this instead of a physical Suica card.
**Touristy Stuff**
We really enjoyed the restaurants in the towers at the **Nagoya** Station. It was so convenient to get there and get something. They had a strawberry festival going, so many places had a special strawberry dessert, and there was a wall directory for those. The restaurant directory was the typical pictures of signature meals with a number that corresponded to a location on a map, which made it really easy to figure out where to go, even if we didn’t have a Japanese speaker with us.
We dived right in and ate at a tempura place the first night. I ate things I wouldn’t have imagined, and that was asking what it was first! It was all very tasty.
We visited Bic Camera because I needed a replacement power plug for my iPhone. For some reason, my phone was losing power, while plugged in, on the Shinkansen. Bic Camera, of course, has all the things: seeing golf gear, liquor, major appliances, toys, electronics, etc., was very impressive.
We toured Nagoya castle, including the Hommaru palace (which we had to remove our shoes for). There’s a nice gift shop in the former kitchen building of the palace, where we got coin purses and nice souvenirs and books. Don’t be afraid to ask if a book is available in English.
We then went to the SCMAGLEV and Railway Park museum, where you can see, and go into some, of the amazing Japanese passenger trains. There’s a nice HO-scale diorama layout (pretty good size), and there’s an option to do a train simulator. They have some interactive exhibits that let you see how bits of the Shinkansen work, and how the new MAGLEV train will work. There’s also a museum store, though it is mostly for kids it seemed, you could find good books, and some interesting foods there: I got a box of “nostalgic” beef curry from the original 1964 Shinkansen recipe.
We did breakfast at the hotel buffet (and the Marriott Associa has an awesome buffet, with Asian and Western brunch foods), then took a train to the airport to fly to **Sapporo**. I already mentioned the limousine bus, and it was nice to have a slow way to see Sapporo. However, my daughter walks with two canes, and it would have been easier on her to take the train to Sapporo station, and then subway to Odori station or just walk the pedestrian mall to the escalators near our hotel.
We went to the Odori park to see the sights and get some food, and enjoyed both. We didn’t go up in the TV tower because of the long wait, and our feet were sore by the time we got there. In the morning, no one was especially hungry but wanted to nibble, so instead of using the hotel’s restaurant, I went to the MEGA Don Quijote across the alley from the hotel to pick up some baked goods and yogurt in the basement grocery department.
We did walk to the JR station in Sapporo, and took the train to the airport — where we finally got some Hokkaido ramen — before flying to **Tokyo**. There, we got to Tokyo station and walked to our hotel. We shopped for fountain pens at Daimaru; had I realized that Maruzen bookstore was closer, and had a larger fountain pen department, I would have gone there. We did get a great tonkatsu meal at a specialty restaurant in Daimaru, though.
We had a scheduled tour of the Imperial Palace grounds the morning of our full day in Tokyo, and after that we took the subway to Asakusa to view the shrine and do some shopping in the streets. We also found a great okonomiyaki place for dinner before we caught another subway to get back to Tokyo station and our hotel.
We wanted to take one long train trip, and did our Tokyo-to-**Nagasaki** trip by train, as I already mentioned. We managed to avoid seeing Mt. Fuji again on this train trip! The second train was not a Shinkansen, and we were in what seemed like a first class area from the 1960s, with wood panelling. The narrow-gauge trains rocked and rolled like Amtrak! But it was nice seeing some of Kyushu at a slower speed.
It was easy to get to the hotel from the station, the trick was that the hotel’s lobby was on the second floor, not ground level. We didn’t know the elevators yet, so we took the narrow escalator up, and one of my bags got stuck. I left it — my son was behind me and worked to unstick it — and I went back down to carry, instead of roll it. This is probably the big tip here, that you can get an elevator inside the AMU Plaza to go up one floor, then take the outside walkway to get to the hotel lobby of the JR Kyushu.
We were looking for a restaurant nearby, but found it had closed. We ended up at a kind of hole-in-the-wall sushi place. It looked very nice, but there was termite damage in the wood counter, for instance. The sushi was delicious, though my son got queasy from the texture of an early piece and stopped eating. We ended up going into the restaurants in the AMU Plaza, and he was comforted by some curry and the largest piece of naan bread we’d ever seen at the Indian restaurant there.
For breakfast the next day, we went to the food court on the first floor of the AMU Plaza, because the restaurant that handled breakfast for the hotel had closed down (maybe being remodeled?). Between Mr. Donut, Lotteria, and Yogorino, we had a pretty good breakfast.
We then caught the bus to Atomic Bomb museum, which is a very sobering place. You learn a lot, and they have a very nice gift shop that includes an English-language section for books. The street you take from the bus or tram stop is Saint Paul Way. Saint Paul, Minnesota, is a sister city to Nagasaki: they were the first cities, I believe, to make this sort of arrangement. The sewer covers and grates for the trees had images of the city flowers for both cities.
We took the tram back to the hotel before catching the bus out to the Penguin Aquarium, which was a very upbeat place. My daughter loves penguins, and they have several species there; the Little Penguins are very talkative if you “erp!” at them. There’s a nice gift shop here, too.
We did dinner at a western place, Bull’s Kitchen, to see how they did a cheeseburger and fries, and it was really good. Their chocolate sundae, though, had fruit cup in the bottom, which was unexpected…and the leaf on top of the whipped cream was parsley, instead of mint. Oh well.
We grabbed breakfast early the next morning, because my daughter had to catch a train, and my son and I were flying to Tokyo for our ride home. We grabbed some baked goods in a small shop inside the entry of the train station, but I didn’t catch the name. My son and I took a limousine bus to the airport — there’s no tram or local train that goes there — and had quite the tailwind to Tokyo, the flight went over 700mph at one point.
We arrived in Terminal 1 at Haneda, and caught a bus that took us to terminal 3, but it takes you outside of the security zone. I would have had more fun riding the monorail between the terminals, I think. We did some shopping at a fan place (a request from a friend) in the walkway shops of the airport garden outside of terminal 3, then got a late lunch before going through security to wait for our flight home.
While waiting at the gate, our passport got checked, and our purpose to visit Japan was asked. Our passport was checked again when we entered the line when our cabin was called for the flight, and the passport was checked a third time before we went through the gate to get to the escalator down to the jetway.
When we arrived in Minnesota, we both have Global Entry, and a CBP agent told us we didn’t need to fill in the customs form, just hand it in in order to leave with our baggage, so that was unexpectedly fast and convenient.
I’m willing to answer questions, if anyone has any!
by DrHugh