Travel Japan: Hokkaido during Summer

Hokkaido is one of the more famous places in Japan aside from Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto.
It is the topmost island of Japan where the cold wind still blows even when the summer breeze is already in Tokyo.

Usually when people talk about Hokkaido, it’s about the snow festival and the cold weather. Being the topmost island of Japan, the temperature can go below zero degrees Celsius during winter days.

So last August, me and two friends decided to spend our summer break in Hokkaido; splitting our 6 days (5 nights) adventure between 3 nights in Furano & Biei and the remaining 2 nights in Sapporo.

The summary of our plan:

  1. Fly from Tokyo to Asahikawa Airport
  2. Stay in a Furano hotel / airbnb
  3. Roam around Furano and Biei
  4. Travel to Sapporo area with bus or train
  5. Stay in a Sapporo hotel / airbnb
  6. Roam around Sapporo area
  7. Fly from New Chitose Airport back to Tokyo

Accommodations:

We kinda wasted a lot of time before doing our hotel booking so most of the cheap and good ones are already booked. If I remember it correctly, we’re almost a month away from the trip before we did the booking. Luckily, we were still able to find some good deals.

B&B Furano

First, B&B Furano. This pension house might not be a luxury hotel but the rooms are good enough for travelers like us. The house is near bus stations and it’s walking distance from some restaurants and 7eleven. The breakfast meals are also great.

For 2 rooms, we paid 75,000 yen for 3 nights.

MYSTAYS PREMIER Hotel

Next, Mystays Premier Hotel in Sapporo. This one is a really nice hotel. Complete with amenities like restaurants and hot spring bath inside the building. The hotel is within walking distance from the city center.

For 2 rooms, we paid 57,000 yen for 2 nights.

The Tourist Spots:

Me and my friends didn’t really stick on a fixed itinerary and schedule. Here is the list of the places we checked out during our trip.

Farm Tomita (Furano)

Flower Land Kamifurano (Furano)

Zerebu Hill (Biei)

Furano Cheese Factory (Furano)

Patchwork no Michi (Biei)

Shirogane Blue Pond (Biei)

Otaru (near Sapporo)

Shiroi Koibito Park (Sapporo)

Sapporo Beer Museum (Sapporo)

Soup Curry GARAKU (Sapporo)

Genghis Khan Restaurant (Sapporo)

This restaurant serves lamb meat for Yakinuku. We waited over 2 hours just to be seated in this famous restaurant and maybe that’s the reason I was too hungry to take pictures. 🙂

Final Thoughts

Our Hokkaido trip last Summer will definitely be on the list of my favorite trips even though we were kind of relax in our itinerary and weren’t able to go to other tourist spots.

Hopefully in the future, I’ll get visit this place again and enjoy the food and places we weren’t able to try. Maybe during winter for a change. 🙂

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