Japan? Japan!

Hokkaido Resort Liner. Might be a few other companies that do it too if the timing of HRL doesn't work for you but they're all much of a muchness.

Two options off the top of my head:
- HRL or similar Furano > Chitose Airport (3hrs) then train into Sapporo (1hr).
- Taxi (2hrs, last year cost 4 of us about 30,000 to get from Sapporo to Furano)

 

There’s a bus from Asahikawa that picks up at the airport on the way. There’s half a dozen a day, and it does drop offs at a few places around Furano as well. Y940 max each. http://www.furanobus.jp/lavender/index.html

There’re trains from Furano to Sapporo, you’ll have to change in Takikawa (ideally) or Asahikawa, if you can time it right it’s as little as 2h 15m and Y4010 each. But it really depends on your schedule. JapanTravel by Navitime is a reasonable app for checking train times.

 

Ah yep - we avoided the public trains as for our schedule by the time you added in the transfer at Takikawa, having to lug bags, and getting from Furano station up to Fenix, the premium for the Taxi split 4 ways wasn't much more and took us to the door.

We went Furano to CTS on the way home so used HRL.

 

The Mrs. and I survived the first two days in Tokyo with the kids.

I'll never understand why a 6yo with 3 cats and 3 dogs in the house insists on going to a cat cafe and dog cafe, but is "meh" about owl, hedgehog and other "we don't have this animal at home" cafes...

Tokyo Disney Sea tomorrow. We expect to not be able to make it for the Fantasy Springs, we can't be bothered lining up from 6am, so will just enjoy the rest of the park. I may do an occasional app check in case of a fresh batch of tickets, but not expecting a win. Hoping to still have a great day - weather is cool but sunny in Tokyo currently - which is just perfect as far as I am concerned!

Z...

 

So, we've been in Sapporo for a couple of days now, done a day at Teine (more just dragging the 4yo and 6yo up the hill in front of the main building), and today at Kokusai Ski resort. Ski resorts here are not terribly huge, but I have to say, the snow today at Kokusai was spectacular, and the only place I've seen better was Snowboard a couple of seasons back, where I got lucky and landed in the middle of the peak of their best snow season in forever.

It's not that deep just yet (about 150cm), but it's very light and fluffy, lots of soft, dry "Jappow" as they seem to call it here. I also hurt my knee a couple of weeks back, so to be honest, I'm not feeling too sorry for myself in terms of not having access to as many black+ trails, but the powder even on the green runs is just so much fun to spray around.

I swear, my kids are totally clueless as to how good they have it. I didn't get to ski snow of this calibre until 15 years after I first put skis on my feet. Anyone with a ski trip booked to the Hokkaido region this year should have a great trip to look forward to!

Hopefully other regions have a great season this year, as well.

Z...

 

36 sleeps! Knowing our luck though, it'll stop dumping - but it'll still be better conditions that Australia.

My partner's first few ski trips were to Niseko/Rusutsu, one of which we had a few absolute ripper days, textbook 60cm dump followed by a bluebird.
The penny dropped when we went to Falls Creek last year as to how spoilt she's been

 

I am not sure my kids will ever know that pain. Their ski history is the Salt Lake City ski slopes (Brighton and Snowbird mainly), HHakuba (specifically for days of now stop snow in around March this year), and now Sapporo. The little shits have no idea how lucky they are. I'll force them to do a ski trip to Aus when they grow up, so they can appreciate it retrospectively.

Now, having said that, Hakuba seems to be doing OK with a 2m base (and currently snowing). The Mrs & I may be coming back for 4 or 5 days in early March for a "just us" ski trip. Little kids really do suck up time doing crap that should be spent skiing, it's amazing how the hours just vanish!

Anyway, was sunny at Kokusai today, so had quite a few good turns with the kids. I just wish I know how to teach them! They do not really have much in terms English of ski schools for kids.

Z...

 

Back in Tokyo for xmas day, and we are staying in Taito. Seems our hotel is located in some sort of Japanese Knife P0rn area, as it took me a full 45 minutes to walk 2 blocks to get a coffee this morning - it really is like Xmas for me, I love knives, and there are some real nice pieces of work, here!

Anyway, it dumped the night before last in Sapporo, and we had about 15-20cm of snow I had to clear off the car in the morning before taking the car back tot he rental place at New Chitose airport. Kinda wish we had the extra day to ski, but I've had 3 out of 5 days as powder days, so no complaints.

Mental note, never decide to start a travel channel with a 64GB iPhone (Not really my choice, I inherited it after destroying my iPhone SE a few months back I'll never argue against a free replacement). It's atrocious for video...

To add to my GAS, I also see lots of camera stores with lenses I want for my OM-1. I must remember to save more money the next time I come to Japan.

Z...

 

If you get the chance get up to Tsubame-Sanjo, you can even visit some of the factories, especially when they have the festival in autumn.

In my experience Japanese camera gear fairly well represented by Japanese sellers on eBay, or using proxy services for Yahoo! Japan Auctions or Mercari.

 

Oh my, this was absolutely the most unexpectedly WTF part of the experience.

Leaving Kobe on the first rental of the trip, straight onto the expressway, the posted limit of the interurban sections on the expressway were 70 and 80. Trucks and other locals flying past at 100-120 in sections. Double checked the documents to make sure what was meant to be a speed limit and what wasn't. Also in other expressway areas particular indicated limits are for combination heavy vehicles only but you would need to understand the Japanese to know that.

Also the expressway tolls ended up being probably more than the rental cost in total. On one particular segment I was instructed to show the receipt (my level of Japanese is low though), I thought that this was the section exit, but this turned out to be that there is some sort of rebate for using that particular section for return trips or something like that and you showed it at the return to the section. In any case I didn't put two and two together (had paid like 10 different tolls by this time) and didn't have the right receipt at hand so just paid.

Credit cards, I had looked up some expressway operator information that suggested they were accepted but in fact only one section operator ever took credit card, most operators were genkin-nomi (cash only). Also for the Kansai operators unfortunately an option for short term ETC isn't available at this time.

Other things:
ETC only entry/exits. Google nav has no idea about these.
Kei car class has the cheapest tolls. I went with a compact class as I was doing a decent roadtrip that day which I don't think was the wrong choice but Kei would have definitely been a bit cheaper overall.
I rented inside Osaka on one other day. Overall, sure there are places that I wouldn't have gone without doing so but it turned out I hadn't rented the Kei class, which was the first mistake, and day renting inside Osaka is just generally a mistake as the peak traffic is just horrid and you won't get that much out of your day.
Can recommend renting from Kobe Sannomiya, traffic there is comparably much lighter and you can get straight onto the expressway from there. I made this decision consciously as it's about 40mins by train from Osaka to Kobe, but about 1h 40mins between the cities by car if it's peak hour. Only downside is that you'll be locked into a day rental essentially if you were staying in Osaka like I was.
Had difficulties with GPS in Osaka as well due to the 3D roads, Google really didn't do too well for the tight roads and general instructions either. I felt like the full tourist driver with NFI that I was.

I visited Mr. Hiro as well, cool little place. I wasn't renting any, but I would say after my experience that (if it wasn't already obvious) you want to rent and get right to the country roads right away. You won't get much out of your hours if you're too far in the urban/suburban vicinity.

Finally, Awaji Island offered absolutely amazingly perfect vistas on the visit. Definitely recommend stopping by Awaji IC before the return trip after dark, some amazing views of the shoreline scenery to be seen just from the interchange. Had I stayed just 30 mins longer I would have seen a moonrise over the city as well, though schedules being what they were it was what it was.

 

What esim or sim cards are people getting whilst in Japan? I've got a 19 day trip coming up on the 19th.

 

Just grabbed these.

Their support mob confirmed that they’ll still last 30 days as long as they’re activated before the 31/1.

Have used them as well as Airalo ones before (although they were cheaper last time as we did some human centipede-esque referral chain).

 

Have done TravelKon eSIM twice now, been happy with the experience.

Actually come to think it, this most recent time I couldn't get my normal Australian service to VoWiFi whatsoever (this didn't have anything to do with the eSIM). I'll post more of the details in the thread from a while back for future reference to people looking for info about using their Australian service via VoWiFi without shelling for a roaming option.

 

Been using Ubigi eSIM, works well and having no trouble this trip with Japanese sites that geoblock, but some of their lower priced options like 3GB/30 days seem to have disappeared. Tried Airalo in the past also had the geoblock issue and I don’t think it was as cheap as Ubigi at the time. When this one runs out might give that one TheWedgie linked a go, thanks.

 

4 more days before I fly to Sydney and then JAL to Sapporo the next day - very much looking forward to the trip, 3 weeks of snow adventures in Hokkaido... and the snow looks amazing this year

 

In terms of e-sim, I've used ubigi a lot, also Holafly and Airalo, but reading recently about global roaming providers and speed/coverage/reliability issues, which we also encountered in Europe last year - I've gone with a local E-Sim.
I got the Sim off bytesim - it wasn't cheap ($100 for 20 days) but should be 10GB/day of 5G with Softbank and KDDI, local IP.

 

I have also used them and found them good. Even their response time for support was good. Price and service was good, got it through Oz bargain. Highly recommend

 

Long shot - anyone stayed in either Ibis Styles Nagoya or Mercure Nagoya Cypress?

EDIT: Booked the Ibis, see how we go!

 

Been looking up luggage forwarding, do you just book it on the day you want to move the luggage or is it pre-arranged like a hotel booking?

 

You can book it on the day, but pickup cut-off times for the hotels will be determined by how they get serviced by the delivery company. Additionally, the transport time from and to different locations vary.

I have generally done the booking on the day, but have only left it for circumstances where I'll be in the next location for a few days so that the transit time never becomes an issue. If you want to do luggage transfer on a tighter schedule you may need to get the luggage on its way a day before.