Itinerary Planning Part 2

As usual it will be quite a headache to decide where to stay. There are so many hotels, especially the major cities like Sapporo. Reviews and comments from travelers in forum like Tripadvisor and Backpacker Taiwan become my source of information when deciding on the hotel to stay. Based on what I noticed, rate of hotel room from the hotel itself or from the hotel room wholesaler “Jalan.net” seems to provide better rate, when compared to the usual hotel room booking sites (not naming them but I guess you should know the usual ones) that we are accustomed to. The problem is that you will get more room rate options when viewing the site in Japanese; there is only a few selections when you view the room option in English or other languages such as Chinese. Perhaps it is due to the language translation issue, the web-host just couldn’t manage to translate every single web page into English so they will restrict the translation into just a few key basic options, thus limiting your choices of hotel room package.

Most if not all the Japanese site will involve entering of guest’s name in Japanese language, addresses, phone number, etc. This was quite a challenge to get it right; to get the right data into the right field, and this will usually involve the use of Google language translation tool, in order to figure out what the form is about, what data are they asking for. A lot of trial and error to get it right as it is quite common to see that the translated texts are comical or makes no sense at all, so has to rely on many “intelligent guess” on your own! As soon as the reservation form was submitted, if nothing goes wrong, a confirmation number appeared next and that confirm the reservation. Most sites will not request for any credit card details even though they have some cancellation clauses, so I guess Japanese are relying a lot on trust and basic courtesy that you abide by the cancellation clauses; notify them should you need to cancel or you can easily cancel or change reservation online yourself.

Rooms in Japan in general are rather small in size; I am seeing room size as small as 15 sqm, compared to the normally 30 to 40 sqm room size you see in a typical Singapore star hotel. You want space then you will have to pay for it. For the whole trip, the “cheapest room rate” in my case will be Y4000 per person per night without meal and the “most expensive room rate” will be Y21500 per person per night (includes seaview, 2 meals and a “floating-ice-walk” tour). As usual, room charges and transportation will be the main expenses for a DIY trip.

To know more about the hotel I am staying at each location, stay tuned to the subsequent posts when I am at the hotel.  I will post pictures and more hotel details in case you might be interested to consider as part of your next trip to Hokkaido.

又是头疼的时候了!  这么多酒店, 该如何选择呢?

到到网(Tripadvisor) 的酒店点评及背包客栈(Backpackers.com.tw)自助旅行论坛背包客的意见就成了我的”止痛药”!  这些点评及意见确实帮助我比较容易做个选择. 据我所见, 酒店自己的网站或Jalan.net酒店网的房价比较优惠. 问题是你得用那日文的网站才会有更多的优惠配套!

多数的日文网站都需要填写日文的酒店预定表格; 得填写姓氏名字(且只能填写日文字母), 日本住址 (我哪里有? 所以就随便填上酒店的地址或随便写个”Singapore” 了事.  很多时候也不晓得表格要哪些资料, 所以就得靠 Google来翻译,  但有时候也翻译得丈八金刚摸不着头脑!  得靠自己的智慧来 “我猜我猜我猜猜猜” 反复试验是否填写对的资料!  如果一切没问题, 最后一页就是预订成功的确认页了(也会寄一份Email). 基本上多数日本酒店都不需要你填写信用卡付定金的,  可能他们都讲信用; 相互信任，互相尊重.  所以如果需要取消, 得记得尊重他人, 尽早通知酒店或自行上网取消预定.

小小的房间似乎是日本的标准规格! 看到小至15平米的小房间! 整个行程,  我那最便宜的房间是Y4000一个人一晚上 (不包早餐),  最贵的房间是Y21500一个人一晚上 (包括早晚餐和一个流冰漫步的活动). 住宿费交通费是一般DIY旅行的最大开销.

想知道我住的酒店是怎么样的话, 那就不要错过我接下来的“实况报道”( 没有啦!  不会是 Live on TV! 而是向你们按实际所见描述给大家知道. 当然会上载照片!  ). 敬请期待 . . .

Itinerary Planning Part 1

With the map of Hokkaido and the places of attraction visited by other travelers in mind, I begin mapping out the likely places I wanna go during winter and the first place to come up on the list was Niseko Ski Resort and there you go; Niseko will be 1 planned place to go. With the help of internet, it is not too long that I get a long list of places to go to during winter in Hokkaido; Niseko, Hakodate, Otaru, Asahiyama Zoo, Akan Lake, Mashu Lake, Noboribetsu (hell valley), Sounkyo gorge, etc. How many of these places have you heard of? Not many I guess? At most, Sapporo and Hakodate may ring a bell, the rest will be clueless to many unless you have been to Hokkaido or has been reading up on Hokkaido. For me, I will be 1 up compared to you as I knew about Niseko prior to this planned trip. I had received marketing emails from various sources about the potential in investing in a holiday home in Niseko. The holiday homes in Niseko during winter time look fabulous and you can easily own one if you have the money to buy 1 private property in Singapore nowadays. Private properties in Singapore are simply priced up to the sky; crazy!!! Comparatively you get a quality holiday home with a fantastic view of Mount Yotei (almost look alike to Mt Fuji if that’s what you are familiar with) in the horizon. Sorry…didn’t mean to digress into a property talk but I guess it is good to know a little bit about Niseko ;)

Now with a long list of places of interest, I put them into a spreadsheet with an indicative date of when to go each of these places. Not surprisingly, I am running out of time to realistically visit the places on the list, so I had to prioritize those places that I really want to go and those that I think are nice but not compelling enough. Eventually I managed to come up with a spreadsheet with a day-by-day schedule of the places to visit. It was just a draft, not sure how realistic is it since ground transportation has not been factored into the plan. With the list of places in mind, had to check online for possible transportation arrangement; beginning with Hokkaido JR since this is one of the most reliable modes of transport to travel from one place to another. The site Hyperdia is a great place to find accurate rail information (including fare too). After putting down all the relevant rail journey into the plan, it certainly looks like it will definitely make a lot of sense to purchase the Hokkaido JR Rail Pass. Without the rail pass, I would be looking at paying easily more than Y20000 just on the rail journey alone! A 4-Days Flexi or 5-Days continuous Pass will cost Y19500.

On paper, my plan seems to be pretty ideal now. Well…not sure how realistic it is practically speaking. So what do I do now? What else but seeking advices from fellow backpackers who had been there done that? It does seem that Hokkaido is more popular among the Taiwanese than it is to Singaporean and they have a whole forum with active discussion and good advices for their fellow travelers to Hokkaido. I decided to join their forum and seek advices there. I posted my plan on their forum and before long, there were helpful people offering their advices and suggestion. I decided to change my plan accordingly and returned to the forum for further advices and fine-tuning the plan. After much fine-tuning and changes here and there, the final draft as it stands now is as follow:

Day 1 : Arrival in Sapporo, Hokkaido via Tokyo Narita. Proceed to Otaru.

Day 2 : Otaru – Kiroro Ski Resort – Otaru

Day 3 : Otaru – Hakodate – Sapporo

Day 4 : Sapporo – Asahiyama Zoo – Sounkyo Gorge Onsen

Day 5 : Soukyo Gorge – Abashiri - Shiretoko

Day 6 : Shiretoko - Sapporo

Day 7 : Sapporo

Day 8 : Sapporo – Home

With the travel schedule firmed up, next is to decide where to stay and make room reservation.

看着北海道的地图还有好些网友提过的一些著名景点, 我开始”布局”; 心想要到哪里走走看看?  第一个想到的地方就是北海道二世谷(Niseko) 滑雪场!  一个心理向往的地方!  你一定会问为什么要到二世谷?  原因是自从看了一些关于投资二世谷度假山庄的照片就被二世谷那漂亮的冬季雪景而迷上了二世谷. 既然要到北海道, 那二世谷滑雪场应该被列入名单内. 除了二世谷那还有哪里是非去不可的呢? 好些网友提过函馆 (迷人的夜景), 小樽运河 (異国浪漫風情),  旭山动物园 (日本最有名的动物园), 阿寒湖/摩周湖 (天然温泉/冬季活動/迷人的自然风景), 登別温泉, 层云峡温泉, 等等. 你都听过这些地方吗?  我想多数新加坡人可能都没听过这些地方?  毕竟那不是新加坡人常去的地方.

有了一大堆非去不可的地方, 我只有短短的八天,  不可能全部都去, 只好得好好考虑一下.  大略地编排了一个行程, 然后上网征询一些网友的意见后, 再重新编排行程.  这样来来回回几遍后, 就大致上确定了行程. 当然, 交通是一个重要的考虑因素. 由于大致上得依赖大众交通工具, 火车 Hokkaido JR 就应该会是首要选择. 看来北海道鐵路周遊券; 4日暢遊券或5日連續使用券(同样是Y19500)会蛮适合我的行程.

确定行程:

第一天  : 经由东京Narita 转机抵达北海道, 前往小樽

第二天  : 小樽 - Kiroro 滑雪场 - 小樽

第三天  : 小樽 -  函馆 - 札幌

第四天  : 札幌 - 旭山动物园 - 层云峡温泉

第五天  : 层云峡 - 网走 - 知床

第六天  : 知床 - 札幌

第七天  : 札幌

第八天  : 札幌经由东京Narita 转机抵达新加坡

确定行程后, 下一步就得想想该住哪里, 预定住宿.

2 Months (Nearly) Before Trip . . .

Decided to create a blog to keep track of this upcoming trip to the winter wonderland of Hokkaido. It is still nearly 2 months away to the trip but preparation has since started; beginning with the booking of airticket a month ago. There is no direct flight to Hokkaido so it is usually involving a transit at Tokyo and the usual airlines that can get you there safely and in the shortest possible time are SQ, ANA or JAL.

Was thinking of trying SQ's A380 to tokyo but the timing of this flight is not the best one can hope for. The SIN-NRT sector is ok since its a day flight but the return sector NRT-SIN will mean arrival in SIN at 3am in the morning! Moreover, there was no fare promotion going on in October when I was pondering over which flight to take, and without promotion fare, the SQ flight to Tokyo alone would have been rather expensive at nearly SGD1000. A normally discounted SQ fare for this SIN-NRT-SIN would be around SGD600 all inclusive. Hence I decided to check out the ANA fare and was glad to see that they are having this promotion fare of SGD200 (excluding taxes) to Tokyo. After including the domestic fare (Tokyo-Chitose-Tokyo) of SGD180 and the relevant taxes etc, it comes up to about SGD850 per person, which I think its quite a deal, so you can see it is important to check early for fare promotion among various airlines and also make sure you check carefully the total cost, not blindly believing in an advertised fare without looking at the fineprint. If you are thinking why I did not mention anything more about JAL cos' there was no promotion fare and the review online seems to point to either SQ or ANA as the favorite airlines to Japan. Well don't wack me if JAL is your favorite airline ;)

By the way, at the time of writing this post, SQ has a "Super Deal" promotion fare to Tokyo for the travel period (off-peak in Singapore) that I will be traveling and it is slightly less than SGD600 (SGD593 to be exact) all inclusive. Their next best deal for the same period is "Sweet Deals 2 to go" and is going at SGD1059! I was just doing a rough calculation that if I had waited for this SQ fare promotion, I can possibly take the A380 to Tokyo and then get a NRT-CTS-NRT domestic flight with ANA (Star Alliance Japan Airpass) for Y21000 (or about SGD356 based on today's exchange rate). Anyway, just calculating for fun since I already got my ANA ticket.

After sorting out the flights, next is to decide what to do and where to go within Hokkaido? Its a big place and its mid-winter in February!

心还在想是不是也该写中文的博客，也不晓得写得够不够水准，会有人要读吗？嗨! 别管了！写了再说，就当作是一个重新练习写中文的机会。既然对象是读中文的读者，那应该不需要写太多关于从新加坡订机票的一些细节。既然机票定了, 下一个发表就会写一些关于如何筹备这个北海道冬季自由旅行的相关资料。北海道 -  看着地图,  这么大, 只有八天, 该怎么走, 该去哪里?