Hokkaido – Wales with volcanoes | Andre and Susan All Over Asia

Hokkaido – Wales with volcanoes

Hokkaido is a really lovely place. The northernmost of the Japanese islands it is much cooler than the southern islands and this was really nice after the heat of Tokyo. The pace of life is a lot more chilled too and the countryside much more lush and green. It really did remind us a lot of home.

Getting to Hokkaido from Tokyo was a bit of a train riding extravaganza, involving a full days worth of travelling on 4 trains. We were already pretty tired at the start because the night before the trip we slept in the seats on an overnight train from Kanazawa and the night before that was spent getting to Kanazawa from Tokyo on another overnight trip – the Japan Rail pass is great but it really does tire you out!

The journey can take more or less time depending on which trains you take. Originally we had intended to take the overnight sleeper from Toyko to Sapporo (capital of Hokkaido island) but unfortunately this was not covered by our JR pass as it was a full-on sleeper train with beds only and was *very* expensive. So we opted for a day time trip instead.

We got most of the way there in 3 hours on the Shinkansen but then you have to switch at Hachinohe to slower trains as the far north of Honshu and Hokkaido haven’t yet got the fast tracks needed by the bullet trains. From Hachinohe we took a ‘Limited Express’ train to Hakodate in southern Hokkaido (another 3 hours). The crossing from Honshu to Hokkaido takes you under the Tsugaru Strait through the Seikan Tunnel, which at 33.46 miles long is one of the longest underwater tunnels in the world.

From Hakodate it was another 3.5 hour journey to Sapporo and then another 1.5 hours to Asahikawa – our base for our time in Hokkaido. We arrived at 12.30 am so the whole journey had taken us 13.5 hours!

It was a lot of effort to get there but very much worth it. We only wish we could have spent longer in Hokkaido. We stayed in a our first Manga Kissa (see future post) in Asahikawa and did day / overnight trips from there. The great thing about Japan is the consistency of things like left luggage facilities in stations. We used these each time we left the Manga Kissa so we could leave our heavy backpacks behind. The lockers charge about Y500 (~£3) per day and you can leave your luggage for a maximum of 3 nights.

We had a great time travelling around the island on the trains, one day we did a loop of the whole island and one of the stops was at the nothern coastal town of Abashiri which looks out across the Sea of Okhotsk, where in the winter you can do some serious iceberg spotting. No ice when we were there but it was great to breathe in the clean crisp sea air and watch birds – within a few minutes we saw dozens of gulls, a heron fishing at the shoreline and a huge sea eagle surveying all from far above.

But by far the highlight of our time in Hokkaido was our trip to Diasetsuzan National Park. This is a large conservation area in the centre of Hokkaido. We stayed at Asahidake Onsen, a hotsprings resort at the base of Mt Asahidake – a 2290m steaming volcano! The place is high up amidst alpine forests and the whole place looks like it belongs in the Swiss Alps! There were lots of hotels in the Onsen but we stayed in a lovely wooden hostel in keeping with the Alpine feel. We could hardly wait to get up the mountain, so we dropped off our bags in the hostel and found the ropeway station. The ropeway (cablecar) took us high above the pine trees, to the summit area where only flowers and small shrubs grow.

We saw lots of Siberian chipmunks with striped bodies and thin tails. They made a lot of noise so were easy to spot and also quite inquisitive of you so it was easy to get some nice close ups.

There are many walking trails up and around the mountain, but we decided not to attempt the summit itself as it was covered in thick cloud so we took the 1.7km loop track around the top instead. It was a lovely walk along a gravel and rock path up to lakes and vents spewing huge plumes of steaming sulphur.