Alvinology goes to Japan – Day 1 of 14

As promised, here’s my first blog entry detailing my Japan trip with Rachel, Mark and Meiyen. Mark  can write and speak fluently in Japanese. He has been to Japan 5 times and his wife, Meiyen, 4 times. I been to Tokyo once when I was in primary school. Rachel is going there for the first time in her life.

The itinerary for the entire trip was planned by Mark, including transportation, the booking of the hotels and cars rental. I was tasked with photo-taking and recording video. Mark is also the main driver when we are on the road and I am the back-up. Rachel and Meiyen’s roles were to sleep at the back of the car and to constantly whine about the coldness.

We departed from Changi Airport at around 1am, on board a SQ flight bound for Kansai Airport in Japan.

Upon reaching our destination, we were to take an internal transfer flight to Hokkaido from Kansai, following a 4 hours interval where we can have lunch and do a wee bit of shopping.

There’s no pictures of us on the ANA flight as it was a very short two hours flight. Plus all of us dozed off completely thoughout as we were really tired. In any case, we found ourselves in Hokkaido already when we woke up! First thing when we got to Hokkaido was to take a shuttle bus service to the car rental centre where our rented car – a Nissan Wingroad was waiting for us.

Oh… btw, Rachel, Meiyen and Mark saw snow for the first time in their lives upon stepping out of the airport doors.

The drive to our hotel from the car rental centre took around 7 hours in total. We stopped at a rest stop after being on the road for about 4 hours for a short break and some snack. The GPS somehow led us to a sealed road upon reaching the hotel… we have to take a long detour as a result.

By the time we reached our hotel, it was already very late by Hokkaido’s standard during winter times (around 6.30pm). We were worried none of the eateries will be open and we may be left hungry for the night. Hence upon unloading our luggages, we immediately took the car and drove to the nearby town centre to find food. The only place still open was a CO-OP supermarket. Sushi and sashimi were all on 50% discount as it was after 7pm – we went on a crazy sweep, buying lots of these for our first dinner in Hokkaido. 🙂

That’s it for now. We turned ourselves in rather early for the first night, having spend almost 36 hours travelling without much sleep. Look out for my next blog entry on day 2 of our trip.

Day 1 – Kansai Airport, Hokkaido

Day 2 – Skiing, Otaru

Day 3 – Asahikawa, Asahiyama Zoo

Day 4 – Sledding, Shiroi Koibito, Crab Buffet

Day 5 – The 60th Sapporo Snow Festival

Day 6 – Staying with the Asai, Shōnan

Day 7 – Ueno, Tokyo

Day 8 – Shibuya and Akihabara, Tokyo

Day 9 – Ikeda, Osaka

Day 10 – Kobe

Day 11 – Kyoto

Day 12 – Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan and Dotonbori

Day 13 – Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge and Mt. Rokko

Day 14 – Return to Singapore

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