Trip Report (Itinerary Part 2): Jan 27 – Feb 15, 2023 – Sapporo / Otaru / Hakodate

**Feb 2- Sapporo**
Flight from HND to CTS airport. Domestic travel within Japan was a new adventure and experience. ANA at HND has the cool automatic bag drop machines that have a closing gate etc. Also the boarding pass that is printed is perfectly sized to fit within your passport, and it doesn’t stick out at the ends that get caught in your bag.

Something to note is that majority of the food is available outside in the pre-security hall. Post-security, the food options are bit more scarce (mostly coffee shops and convenience food). HND has a great plane viewing platform (pre-security, level 4) and we got to see ANA Demon Slayer, Star Wars livery. Additionally caught glimpses of the Vulpix livery on the Air Do planes.

Domestic Japan flights board in zones, but based on where your seat is (window, middle, aisle) and boarding is completed 10 minutes before departure. This made for a very seamless boarding and doors were closed within 6 minutes of boarding and we departed on time.

CTS airport has a great food selection on the 3rd floor, 2nd floor is more of a market style for souvenirs etc. We saw crabs being shipped by travelers to other nearby cities / countries.

The airport train to Sapporo does seem to travel at a slower speed compared to the trains of Tokyo but this is probably due to the snow build up on tracks and safety concerns. Something we did notice in Sapporo (and Otaru) is that it can go from blowing sideways snow to clear skies in 45 minutes.

**Feb 3 – Sapporo**
We took an early morning train to Sapporo Morning Market and was able to secure a 2kg King Crab for 5 people and it was probably one of the best items we had on this trip. We got it half grilled and half steamed. Grilling it brought out the salty sea flavor and steaming it brought out the sweetness. 100% recommend. Market price was approximately 14,000JPY to 18,000 JPY per kg depending on which store you go to.

Returning to downtown Sapporo meant we continued to see workers completing the snow and ice sculptures. Snow sculptures are kept at the Odori site and ice sculptures are kept at the Susukino site.

This was also the night i found a local izakaya place for yakitori skewers. There was definitely no english menu and I’m sure the little old lady running the stall was surprised to see two tourist come in. She did ask me at the end how I found her restaurant and I told her I had used google maps and looked up yakitori and found her place within walking distance of our hotel.

**Feb 4 – Otaru (Snow Miku exhibition)**
This was another last minute addition to our itinerary as we discovered this was happening. My husband and some of the friend we were traveling with are huge Miku fans and the 2023 version of Snow Miku was being launched this day. We also learned something about exhibitions in Japan. Even though the merch page will show you everything in one place, the website is actually just a collection of all items being sold and you have to hunt down each item from its respective vendor. We assumed that it would be a big “official merch” booth that had everything, but by the time we figured out this difference, some vendors had long lines and items were sold out before we reached the front.

Otaru also had amazing views of the northern ocean and we could see them getting ready for the Otaru Light Festival (started on Feb 11 and we left the Hokkaido area by the 8th so we missed it). We got to see the workers creating the snow piles and little indents for the lights to go into. Looking forward to seeing the photos and videos of the area later.

We found some great ramen and Hokkaido ice cream but left Otaru for Sapporo around 5:30-6PM as most of the stuff in Otaru closes around 6PM. Due to the expo, we did miss out on visiting the Stained Glass museum and the music box museum but that’ll be for next time.

We did get back to Susukino to see the ice sculptures lit up in the evening and they had one very cool one with various crabs and seafood frozen into it (as it was commissioned by one of the seafood stores)

**Feb 5 – Sapporo**
This day involved wandering the Snow Festival site and then waming up in our hotel and back out again. It had snowed overnight, so most of the snow sculptures in Odori were not recognizable until their handler came by to brush off excess snow and give it a bit of a touch up. In the daytime lighting, you could see much more the detailed carving on the ice sculptures and prizes were tacked on to the winning designs. As we were leaving the Odori site it started snowing again and quickly became a wet snow within 15 minutes.

**Feb 6 – Sapporo**
We quickly visited the snow sculptures again to get better photos (the nighttime light up makes for weird photographs) during the day and I was able to visit Baristart which was a recommendation for a latte place as they use Hokkaido milk (Biei or Ito Farms) and you can pick a specific one. Definitely can taste the difference between the milks used (smoothness, richness etc).

We accidentally picked out a fancy sushi restaurant for lunch but it was an amazing experience. The chef actually walked us out and everything and I didn’t know when to stop bowing to them cause it was just awkward (not use that to that kind of hospitality). We thought the Sapporo Olympic Museum was open, but turns out it’s closed for renovations until March. This wasn’t posted on the Olympic Museum website, but rather the Okayama Ski Jump, so we had a lot of time to kill before our dinner reservation.

**Feb 7 – Sapporo & Packing**
This was our last day in Sapporo and we had to do some luggage packing as we obtained a Ghibli Bonsai and it was wide so we had to do some interesting packing choices. Our goal was to pack everything away until we arrived in Tokyo on Feb 9, and utilize our backpack for the 8th and 9th. We took this day pretty slow and managed to catch the last light up projections on the ice sculptures. The Snow Festival site doesn’t actually post which snow sculptures will have a projection / what time interval they’ll be, but best time to see them would be from 5-8PM.

**Feb 8 – Hakodate**
The morning started with a 4 hour train ride to Hakodate and we arrived around 1:30PM. The Hakodate Liner between Sapporo and Hakodate travels along the coast at various points so it makes for beautiful views. The luggage storage is a bit limited but sometimes they have a luggage area between the cars that most people don’t notice so that’s an option too. Hakodate apparently was doing a Snow Miku collab with Hirosaki so I lost my husband to his Snow Miku obsession for a bit.

We went to visit the Mt Hakodate Ropeway and walking to it from the Hakodate Bay warehouse area to the ropeway entrance is a sloped sidewalk. Thankfully it wasn’t too icy but glad we noticed a bus on our way up so we took the bus back down. The observatory at the top gives a great view of Hakodate night skyline.

**Feb 9 – Sendai**
We left Hakodate relatively early and made our way down to Sendai as both my husband and I are huge fans of gyutan (beef tongue). It also broke up the long 4.5 hour train ride between Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto to Tokyo Station into two parts so it made it more bearable.

Sendai has a lot of interesting things to offer but we weren’t able to spend more days here due to a couple mandatory events that we were attending in Tokyo that couldn’t be moved around. My friend had also recently visited Sendai and said there are good oysters nearby.

Last part – Back to Tokyo…