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.
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