From the title, you could see that there's more misadventures during our trip. Sigh! It was supposed to be a very straightforward day, which we'll take a free resort shuttle bus from Sapporo Station and stay at Sounkyo for the night. But things happened (as always)...
I did not sleep as well the second night, waking at weird hours like 2.30am, 5am and so on... Finally, at 8am, I woke up to go to the onsen and get my laundry done at the same time. I saw that there's a few washing machine and dryer that we can use for free inside the onsen, so decided to take the chance to clear off some laundry. The onsen was less crowded at this hour compared to the previous night, and I enjoyed my morning bath tremendously. It was past 9am and the clothes were still spinning in the washing machine, so I stopped it and put all the clothes in the dryer since the onsen will close at 10am. Some of the clothes were still a little damp when I went down again at 10am, so I hang them around the hotel room while waiting to check out.
I did not plan to stay at Sounkyo initally, but after some advise from the folks at Tripadvisor and redoing my itinerary, I decided to spend one night there since I'm heading to Asahikawa for the zoo. I chose Choyo Resort Hotel as its a long way to Sounkyo and they have free shuttle service from Sapporo. As the shuttle service is a important part of our journey, I emailed the hotel once in Oct when I booked the hotel and once just days before the trip (I did some rebooking of the hotel and did not want to lose the booking of shuttle service). The staff replied me to confirm the booking of the free shuttle service and told me that the bus will depart at 2.30pm. I checked the website and saw the timing, printed out the email as I got ready for the trip.
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| Took pictures of the 'fake food' outside while waiting |
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| Our western lunch at Sapporo |
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| My seafood baked rice |
We asked for late checkout (extended till 12 noon) since we only need to be at Sapporo Station at 2.30pm. It was a Sunday afternoon, so Daimaru was crowded when we headed there for our brunch, we went to the basement where there's many many food counters and good reviews on Tripadvisor, it was pretty similar to our Takashimaya basement but the scale of this was much bigger and better. But with our luggage and nowhere to sit, we decided to head up to 8th floor of Daimaru again and look for a restaurant for lunch. We saw a western restaurant with long queue outside, but decided that it looked quite appealing and we should have sufficient time to queue. We waited in queue for awhile and got ourselves a table. They allowed us to park our luggages near the door and at each table there were hooks for patrons to hang up the coats and jackets. I flipped through the menu, undecided of what to eat, then finally decided on baked rice. P had his beef steak, after the pretty average burger steak meal the previous night. The food tasted quite mediocre and I did not find the baked rice really delicious, just filling up my stomach with food before the long journey.
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| Love the packaging! They provided ice packs too! |
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| Yummy cheese tarts (can keep for two days in fridge) |
After we were done, we traveled to basement to get to JR station. I saw Kinotoya Cafe just next to Daimaru and I remembered there were good reviews about their cakes and tarts, so I joined the queue to get some cheese tarts to try. As it was just 1.45pm, I went to Twinkle Plaza at Sapporo JR station next to get all my reserved seats booked for the rides ahead, in this way I'll be comfortable on those long journeys and my rail pass will be even more cost-saving than ever.
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| All the reserved seats tickets done |
At 2pm, we headed to north exit of the JR station according to the instructions from the hotel website, trying to find the exact spot where we were supposed to wait for the shuttle bus. It was quite windy out there and getting cold, we stood for awhile right outside the exit but it did not look like a place where shuttle bus will pick up people so we move to another spot and checked with the traffic warden there. I showed him a small map provided by the hotel and he pointed us back to the spot where we were waiting previously. It was getting tiring and cold to push our luggage to and fro, we waiting outside the JR exit again, feeling that something was not right. P checked with another lady who spoke some English and once again we moved back to the second spot where we saw shuttle bus pick up people. I thought it looked more likely to be the spot where passengers can board. I was talking to another uncle holding a card for another hotel and he asked me for the time the bus should pick us up. I told him 2.30pm and was vaguely aware that it was already 2.40pm after all the waiting and running around. Japanese trains and buses are always very punctual so something was very wrong. Realisation suddenly hit me and I looked at the timing on the website again, the bus had left at 12noon, when we had took our own sweet time checking out from Keihan. I was feeling very upset with myself for the grave mistake, I had checked the timing several time but did not realise that the staff had given me the wrong time.
P and I decided that we had to find our way there since we had booked the hotel for the night. I checked the directions on the hotel website and searched Hyperdia, then went to the ticketing machine to get a reserved seat to Asahikawa first. We were shocked that 2 tickets of the train at 3+ would set us back by 164 SGD, about 14000Y. We had to choose a later timing at 4pm, more than an hour of waiting at the station and that will still cost us about 100SGD. There was sufficient time to walk around the malls but we did not have the mood to do so. While P sat at the station, I went to a nearby international atm to withdraw an additional 30000Y (approximately 350SGD) as I was only left with half the cash I brought and there were still many more days to go.
Next, I saw the Tourist Information Counters at the JR station and decided to drop by since I had time on hand. Earlier on, i asked the lady at Twinkle Plaza to help me find the shortest route from Niseko to Lake Toya (I had actually researched on Hyperdia earlier and have all the timing with me), she said i have to go through Otaru and the whole journey will take about 4hrs+. Having done my 'homework' on Hyperdia, I know there's a shorter route but even though I asked her again, she told me that that is the fastest way. She was using this hard copy train schedule book to show me all the train timing, I was contemplating if I should tell her what I found out from Hyperdia but decided to go and ask at other JR stations later on. As I happened to see this counter there helping tourists with JR trains related stuff, i realised I can get my second opinion there. The lady there spoke much better English and she used a tablet to find the shortest way, she told me that there's indeed a shorter way and helped me get new reserved seats tickets, saving me 1-2h of traveling time. Imagine setting off at 9+am and 1+pm will get me to the same place at the same time? Phew! Finally a piece of good news to make me feel slightly better.
At near 4pm, when we went up to the platform to find the train, we realised that it could be quite confusing to look for the correct platform to go to, and the only way is to look at the boards for the destination and corresponding time on the tickets. We finally left Sapporo at 4pm and the sky was already getting dark then, the reserved seats were quite comfortable and we fell asleep on the 85min journey to Asahikawa. Asahikawa is actually our next destination after Sounkyo Onsen and we will be back the following day, I actually contemplated to just stay over there for a night since we felt a bit traumatized by the turn of events, but we decided to press on. We had to travel to Kamikawa for the next part of the journey but when we tried to book reserved seats, we could not really find a train going there till 6pm+. We tried the ordinary ticketing machine and found the local train ticket to Kamikawa, it's the first time we're going to take local train and its quite unplanned, so we're not really sure if that's the right one. Anyway, it cost 1070Y for each of us on the local train. P spoke to the staff and she directed us to platform 1 where the train was waiting, we were a bit confused as the door was not opened, then I read the words and saw that everyone was boarding at the first door as they will collect a small piece of ticket as they board. It pretty interesting to take the local train for the first time, although it felt slower since the train will stop at every station. We managed to get seats and I was trying to listen to the train announcement as some parts were in English, the only info that I've gotten was the train was bound for Furano. I felt unsettled as there wasnt any board on the train showing all the stations that we have to go through unlike the other trains we've taken, I was even more curious when I heard the announcement that we've passed Biei. Our pocket wifi device came to the rescue as I finally managed to find a copy of all the train stations on Google and to my horror I realised we're heading to another direction instead of Kamikawa. I quickly told P about this as we had already traveled for 40min on that train and we showed the train driver our local train ticket, he appeared confused as he could not really understand what we were saying. Luckily some young chaps boarded the train at this moment and with some limited English, he asked us for our destination and concluded that we have to take the oncoming train at the station opposite. We were grateful as the whole train stopped just to let us sort out this mess.
We literally grabbed our luggages and jumped off the train as the train was already at the opposite station. Somehow, I think the driver could see us struggling and waited for us there as well. It was really an adventure as the track was covered with ice (this part of Hokkaido was more snowy and icy than Sapporo, but we did not notice on the way as it was already dark outside) and we had to cross it in the darkness, the station was one station after Biei and its a lone unmanned station, I cant imagine how scary it could be if we were all alone there. We boarded the other train quickly and headed back to Asahikawa again! Sigh!
By the time we were back at Asahikawa, it was 7pm and the staff confirmed what I had found out from Hyperdia, the next train was at 8.47pm and a quick calculation showed that we will reach Kamikawa around 10pm and another cab ride to the hotel will take us 30min. I was looking forward to the nice buffet dinner at the hotel but we will definitely miss it if we reach at 10.30pm, we'll be tired, hungry and less than 24hours coming back to Asahikawa again. It seemed that we had no other choice but to give up on going over to Sounkyo after all these journey. I remembered JR Inn Asahikawa is the cheapest hotel I had booked for this trip (90+ SGD), therefore I suggested we try asking if they have a room that night and if they really have no room, we'll decide if we still proceed to Kamikawa.
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| Asahikawa Station |
As what I had expected, Asahikawa is colder as it is east of Sapporo, we could see a lot of snow and ice just outside the station. The JR Inn is actually connected to the JR station but we were unfamiliar and walked out of the station to look for the entrance to the hotel. P simply loved the icy sidewalks and was walking towards all the snow while we dragged our luggages around. The JR Inn is on the 5th floor of the AOEN mall, a shopping mall connected to the JR station too. The lady at the reception spoke very good English and they do have a rooms for the night, starting from 6000Y onwards. We chose a more expensive room as we wanted to stay in the same room for the two nights instead of shifting over the following day, we did not regret our decision as our room was really nice (hotel review in the next post).
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| Very snowy landscape just outside the station |
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| P was so excited with the snow |
After past hours of stress and disappointment, we finally settled down and rested for awhile in the hotel room. We went out at 8.30pm as P was really excited about the snow outside and wanted to explore and take some pictures of the place. We walked some distance down from the JR station along Heiwa-dori Shopping street and found a drug store etc, took some pictures with the decorated X'mas tree there and then headed back to AOEN mall to look for dinner when it was 9pm. Unfortunately, the mall have early closing time and most of the restaurants were closing by then. We went back to the hotel room to rest for awhile before going out to look for dinner again, I was so tired that I fell asleep on the cosy bed and P did the same, we took a short nap and woke up again at 10pm as we were feeling really hungry after the long day.
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| Xmas tree along Heiwa-dori street |
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| Icy walkways with xmas feel |
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| Enjoyed my dinner a lot |
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| Other Izakaya food |
Other than the Kinatoya cheese tarts that we had, we did not have much to eat since lunch, we went out to look for dinner and ended up at a Izakaya 猿の山, 居酒屋 seems to be a good choice for both of us since we tend to have late dinner and I can fulfil my Japanese food craving while accommodating to P fussy tastebuds. I have Japanese chazuke and shashimi, P was so hungry so he ordered assorted yakitori, french fries, some yummy pork stuff and so on. We had a good meal and it was past 11+ when we walked back, it was freezing cold and we needed our gloves, beanies, thick layers of jacket etc. We went for onsen (glad that it's opened till 1am) and it felt really good after the hours on the train and the very cold night. My eyes felt so heavy after the nice onsen and I fell asleep soon.
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| Off to the onsen! |
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