Japan Day 1

03-May, 0600 - Upon touching down at Haneda Airport, we immediately proceed on our next leg of journey - taking trains from the airport to Sapporo in Hokkaido. The reason why we are doing this is to save money as a one way ticket to Sapporo will cost us about $600 during the golden week but the trains (if we managed to reserved the seats) will cost us only around $450. Looking back now, we did not anticipate that our plans totally backfired on us (read on to find out why).

The trains (even the local subway) standards in Japan! Cushion seats with thick sponge for the passengers! When will our dear SMRT and SBS adopt this?? Hmmm

A bad part that I find about the stations in Japan - too many stairs, which is not very friendly to tourists pulling big and heavy luggage who are in a rush to catch trains.

Ahh, the Japan Rail Pass, which is a must if you are planning on travelling long journey by trains for a period of time. A 7 day pass for international tourist cost around 28,300 yen.

The Golden Week in Japan. where the north travel to the south and the south travel to the north. Transportation, whether by land or air will be in total chaos, as can be seen from the picture above. This is the crowd at Shinagawa at 8am, and the bullet train we are taking is delayed by 45 mins.

In the end, we did not managed to reserved a single seat for our journey to Sapporo, so we have to make do with the little space by the door, a grilling 12 hour journey with 3 train transfers.

Our first transfer station, Shin-Aomori, stopping by to have a quick lunch. A unique setup for the small eateries in Japan is the vending machine which customers can order their food. Once you paid for the food, you will be issued with a ticket, which you pass to the counter and wait for your number to be called. Once you have finished eating, you have to return the tray back to their collection station.

The engineering wonder of Japan - Digging a train tunnel 100m below the sea floor.

Finally, we arrived in Sapporo around 7pm.

Our hotel, which is decorated to have an antique feel.

Even the lift is from the ancient era.

Hotel Monterey Sapporo, the hotel we stayed for 3 days, which is about 15mins walk from the Sapporo train station.

The night view of the streets in Sapporo, which unfortunately was drizzling for the next 2 days. Our shoes are totally wet from the rain.