My husband and I have our honeymoon tickets booked with miles to arrive in late fall to enjoy the red autumn leaves. The advantage? It’s fully refundable. Disadvantage? Our dates are inflexible and as we expected all the other business class flights available with miles disappeared as soon as the tourism trials were announced so our dates are stuck.
We will be in Japan for 5 weeks. Our overall plan is to travel around Hokkaido, all around the Touhoku region, maybe Niigata region, then fly to Kyuushuu and explore around there before flying home.
The wrench in our plans is that, 9 days after we land, assuming we don’t cancel entirely due to continued tour group restrictions or similar, a guided nature walk we really want to do in Oirase Gorge ends. Also the walk can potentially be cancelled due to weather, so we’d prefer to be there before the final day so we have multiple days to potentially go on the walk, though we only intend to stay for two nights. This means we’re forced to backtrack to both do this and hit all our planned destinations.
Right now I’m looking at two routes to handle this, but would appreciate any other suggestions or thoughts.
Route 1:
Fly into Sapporo airport on landing day. Spend 5 nights in Hokkaido excluding landing day. Take the overnight ferry to Hachinohe from Tomakomai. Spend 1 night near-ish Hachinohe. Spend 2 nights in Oirase Gorge to go on the nature walk. Go to Odate with a route that takes us through our planned destinations of Hirosaki and Aomori, then hit those destinations on the way back.
Known Advantages: We can use credit card points for the connecting flight to Sapporo, and even get a business class flight for not much more points.
Known Disadvantages: A time restriction on our time in Hokkaido.
Route 2:
Fly into Aomori airport. Immediately go to Oirase Gorge for the nature walk. Fly up to Sapporo Airport and continue our itinerary except this time following the Shinkansen line allowing us to potentially spend more time in Sapporo, and stay a night in Hakodate (though mostly just as a rest stop)
Known advantages: Don’t have to worry about rushing destinations; we can spend enough time at each to get sick of the area.
Known Disadvantages: Drastically more expensive, and we can’t use credit card points for either the connecting flight to Aomori or the flight to Sapporo or get business class flights at a price we’d be willing to pay.
3 comments
Airports are stressful, take the train.
Option 2 sounds better as 5 days to explore Hokkaido is short unless you are ok only visiting 1 or 2 places.
How many extra days would you like to spend in Hokkaido and if you spend extra days there what would you be sacrificing from the rest of your trip?
You may want to look into [JAL](https://www.jal.co.jp/world/en/world/japan_explorer_pass/lp/) and [ANA](https://www.ana.co.jp/en/ph/plan-book/promotions/special-fares/) discounted tickets for visitors. Since you’ll be traveling around areas that have less rail service it might make sense to use more flights than rail if you’re looking to maximize amount of time on the ground. This may also have the added benefit to worry less about backtracking. Another factor you may have to consider is how much luggage you’re bringing which can be mitigated if you use some luggage forwarding services. Also if you’re concerned about business class tickets, you may be able to buy upgrades at check in for reasonable prices. That being said flight times between the destinations you’re looking at are fairly short and you’ll likely be flying regional planes anyways so not sure it’ll make much of a difference in terms of comfort.
Other than that option 2 might be the better choice. However, not sure what you mean by following the shinkansen line since there is no shinkansen between Sapporo and Hakodate.