My wife and I just came back from our 3 week trip to Japan. We wanted to thank a lot of the advices we found/stole from here so we wanted to return the favor now. Our trip consisted of 3 different major locations and I’ll try to break down each day, the hotels we stayed at and provide a summary of the overall experience at the end of each day/stay. We flew in from Hong Kong, so jetlag was not an issue for us. We’re both 31 and are in decent health and fitness. Wife is less active but we had been going on walks a month prior to the trip to get some steps in to train her body for the on-average 15k steps days. Not heavy drinkers, don’t smoke, no life-threatening allergies so we didn’t have to avoid any food/open to trying everything.
Part 1: Hokkaido (Sapporo/Otaru/Lake Toya/Hakodate)
Nov 8 – Hotel JAL City Haneda Tokyo
Land in Haneda around 7pm got through customs easy with the QR codes done ahead of time. Had dinner at Hanayama udon and got some flat udons. Set up pasmo on phone wallet. Took the free shuttle bus back to hotel JAL city. Grabbed some late night snacks (pudding + soufflé thing) and egg sandwich for breakfast from Familymart. The room was decent and we just needed a place to stay for a night. Best part of the hotel is that they have a free shuttle to and from Haneda Airport.
Location of Hotel: **4/5** Hotel staff: **4/5** Service/Amenities: **4/5**
Overall: **4/5** Recommend: **Yes**
Nov 9 – Hotel MYSTAYS Sapporo Aspen
We took the free shuttle back to the airport and hopped onto flight to Sapporo, arrived at 2pm and wandered around the airport a little. It’s kind of like a shopping mall to a certain extent. We tried some fresh Calbee potato sticks. Then we hopped onto the Airport Express towards the hotel. Before checking in, we went to get a queuing ticket at Nemuro Hanamaru at Steller Place, there were 12 groups ahead of us at 4pm on a Thursday. We went to check in and went back to the restaurant after and we were in queue inside the restaurant already, not that bad of a wait. Sushi was ok, a bit of a lack of variety in my opinion. They did have an English menu and we would just write the number for the item we wanted and handed to the chef. After that we walked through Stellar Place, went to a nearby Diaso and drug mart and then went to a yakitori place right across from the hotel for dinner, it was just ok.
Nov 10 – Hotel MYSTAYS Sapporo Aspen
Woke up and went to Nijo market to find breakfast. Had an amazing uni don, the crab miso soup is worth the upgrade. We also got a don with tuna scallop and crab meat. The tuna was ok, scallop was a little disappointing, not as sweet as I thought it’d be. Restaurant name was Ohiso. We wandered around the area, Daiso, book off, don quiote. And then we went to a soup curry place called Treasure. I was unsure what to expect at first and we had to wait a little bit as it was around lunch time but it was worth the wait. I have never had soup curry before, so my initial thought was that we just mix the curry into the rice like usual, but the soup curry is actually a lot more thin (like a soup rather than sauce, huh who would have guessed). It was really good and well worth the 20 mins wait. We then decided to head back to the hotel first with our shopping goods and took a quick break. Then we went to the Uniqlo at Apia. We got a couple of bags and added on embroidery designs that are specific to Hokkaido, it takes 1 day due to the volume of orders so we wanted to get that out of the way first, also not every Uniqlo has this service. Then we found a ramen store, Honryu for dinner. When we were looking at reviews, it seemed like everyone talked about an angry old lady having horrible service, we definitely encountered this old lady but I felt like the service was ok, nothing to complain about. Finally we went on a night stroll to Tanukikoji street, capsule stores, crane games and had a crepe.
Nov 11 – Hotel MYSTAYS Sapporo Aspen
Woke up early, got some more sandwiches from Secomart, and went on our way to Otaru. It was snowing pretty hard by the time we got there. Had great uni dons at Yoichiya. We walked around a bit and headed back to Sapporo for a quick break, did some laundry in the hotel, and had dinner at an Omurice place in the underground food street. Picked up our Uniqlo bags and headed down to Susukino to roam around. Played some crane games, won some plushies and had an izakaya famous for their overloading salmon roe rice.
Nov 12 – Hotel MYSTAYS Sapporo Aspen
We got some sandwishes from Sandria vending machine, we walked by it every day going from station to hotel and they always had a line up so we decided to give it a try. It was surprisingly better than what we got at Secomart Then we had Sushiro for lunch, a conveyor belt sushi chain, but probably because after COVID, there wasn’t anything on the conveyor belt except for wasabi and salt packets. We would order on the tablet and our plates would get zoomed to us instead. After that we went to a mandarake, jungle entertainment shop and animate for my gunpla/figurines adventures, but couldn’t find what I wanted. Then we went to the Ishiya Chocolate factory park, we opted not to go through the museum and instead just enjoyed some snacks and the little show they had. Finished the night with some mutton at Ghengis Khan. Quick side note, the first Ghengis Khan we went to had a line up of about 10 people outside, they had a sign outside that showed their different locations nearby, and we found like 6 of them within 5 min walk of each other so we decided to go look at those and actually found one that had no line up and we just went straight in. It was very good if you like lamb. This was our last night in Sapporo so we went back to the hotel and packed everything up and asked the Hotel staff to help us fill out the Ta-Q-Bin form for us. The hotel actually had someone from Ta-Q-Bin to pick up so we could just drop it off with them after checking out. It was about $20 CAD per big luggage and we had 2. It was the best choice of our trip as we didn’t have to lug our luggage from hotel to hotel.
Location of Hotel: **5/5** Hotel staff: **5/5** Service/Amenities: **4/5**
Overall: **4.67/5** Recommend: **Yes**
Nov 13 – Lake View Toya Nonokaze Resort
Checked out of hotel, handed our luggage to Ta-Q-Bin employee and went to Ippudo for lunch. After that, we took the shuttle bus to Lake View Toya Nonokaze Resort. It was snowing by the time we got there. We checked into the resort and had a quick dip into the private onsen in the room. The room was massive, it had two beds, a living room with a L-shaped sofa, the washroom area had 2 separate sinks, the onsen was large enough to fit 3-4 people, and the view was amazing looking into Lake Toya. We had a dinner buffet included, the selection was pretty good and the overall quality of the food was pretty good too. The only complaint I would have here was that the check in process took too long, we were led into a lounge area and were sat down with a drink and small snack. It took too long waiting for our drink and snack, I just wanted to get to our room and soak and relax! Other than that though, the resort was beautiful and well worth the price.
Location of Hotel: **4/5** Hotel staff: **5/5** Service/Amenities: **5/5**
Overall: **4.67/5** Recommend: **Yes**
Nov 14 – Comfort Hotel Hakodate
Woke up had a quick soak then proceeded to have breakfast buffet. The selection for breakfast was slightly underwhelming, but all in all it was well worth it. After checking out, the staff was helpful enough to let us know which bus to take to head towards Toya station and took the JR to Hakodate. After checking in, we went to the Goryokaku park and tower. Bought some souvenir and had a quick stroll around the park. Then we had an expensive conveyor belt sushi that we felt wasn’t really worth their price. Ended the night early and had the front desk help us ship our luggage’s to Osaka hotel. Quick note on the hotel, the pillows were basically non-existent. If you are someone that needs a firm pillow/neck support, you will suffer. I didn’t think of it at the time but I think if I had asked front desk, they may have firmer pillows available.
Location of Hotel: **5/5** Hotel staff: **5/5** Service/Amenities: **1/5** (basically just the pillow issue)
Overall: **3.67/5** Recommend: **No** \- if you are staying for more than 1 night, otherwise Yes
1 comment
Any favorite restaurants? Ones so good that you’d go again?