I have been to Japan more times, and gradually my understanding of Japan has become clearer. For example, Japan can be simply divided into Tokyo and regions outside of Tokyo.
This is because Tokyo, with the power of a single city, has absorbed nearly half of Japan’s population. Therefore, Tokyo’s urban density and operational logic are completely incomparable to other regions in Japan. Even though Japan still has cities like Osaka and Nagoya, their scale and density are already N orders of magnitude behind Tokyo.
For example, Japan can also be divided into urban and rural areas.
From the perspective of Chinese travel, Japanese cities are certainly different from China and have many new things. But in my opinion, the difference between rural Japan and China is really big.
I have been to many small fishing villages by the sea in Japan, and have also stayed in homestays in Kyushu or Hokkaido. Although there are very few people, the facilities are complete. There are convenience stores like 7-11 everywhere where you can buy food, and machines can buy water everywhere. Any homestay is not dirty and is particularly clean.
Even though it takes a lot of time to travel due to not being able to drive in Japan, JR trains or buses still allow me to reach most of the places I want to go.
When traveling in rural Japan, I often marvel at Zhuangzi’s ideal of a small country with few people, which seems to have been realized in Japan (but there are not many young people left in rural Japan, and this kind of small country with few people may no longer be sustainable).
I have been to Japan dozens of times and still enjoy it, basically because it can be played together. For example, going to Tokyo or Osaka for four or five days at a time, shopping in the city, and taking a family trip. Next time, we will go on a seven or eight day trip to Kyushu or Hokkaido. This trip is mainly not in the city, but in the countryside of Japan.
Excluding shopping, I personally think the most fun places in Japan are Kyushu (especially Kitakyushu) and Hokkaido.
Many people say Okinawa is good, but I have been there and don’t think it feels like a tropical vacation beach. I don’t know where Okinawa is good, so it’s better to go to Sanya or Southeast Asian islands.
My impression of Kyushu has declined because I haven’t been there for three or four years. And not long ago, we traveled to Hokkaido again and decided to write a travel guide for Hokkaido when we came back.
1.How to get to Hokkaido?
Going to Hokkaido costs much more than going to Tokyo.
Taking Beijing as an example, there has always been an Air China flight from Beijing to Sapporo. The airfare prices are carefully designed.
Before the epidemic, the usual round-trip cost was around 4500 yuan. This cost is roughly equivalent to the cost of flying back and forth to Tokyo and then taking a domestic flight from Tokyo to Sapporo, so it’s better to fly directly from China. If you want to take the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Hokkaido, it is also possible, but the Shinkansen can only go to Hakodate (the Shinkansen that connects Sapporo has been in use for decades and cannot be repaired), and you also need to transfer to the slower JR to go to Sapporo. The Shinkansen is very expensive, and by calculation, it may be even more expensive than a Tokyo connecting flight to Sapporo.
After more than three years of interruption, the direct flight from Beijing to Sapporo has resumed. I checked the ticket price once and it’s around 8000 yuan for a round trip. This ticket price is too expensive. If you transfer to Sapporo through Tokyo, at the current ticket price, it usually costs around 3500 yuan for a round-trip flight from Beijing to Tokyo. In addition, the round-trip cost for domestic flights in Japan (the cheapest one-way fare before the epidemic was 10000 yen, but now it has also increased, and the normal round-trip cost is around 2000 yuan) is also around 5500 yuan. At this price, you can transfer to Europe via Polish Airlines.
Hokkaido is very large, divided into southern, central, northern, and eastern provinces. The closest places are Daonan in Hakodate and Daoyang in Sapporo, which are connected by JR and can be visited by flying to Sapporo or the Shinkansen to Hakodate.
But if you go to the most fun part of Dokdo, it takes a long time to travel from Sapporo, and JR ticket prices are expensive. At this time, I think the best way is to fly directly from Beijing to Tokyo, and then fly from Tokyo to the three airports in Dokdo.
I have been to Hokkaido Road East twice, and both times I went there this way. Although the price is relatively high, considering the overall time cost and the JR ticket price from Sapporo, it is the most cost-effective.
Before the pandemic, I had been to Hokkaido four times. Two of them were spent near Sapporo and Hakodate, visiting famous attractions such as Sapporo, Hakodate, Otaru, Furano, and Asahikawa. But there is a famous ski resort called Niseko between Sapporo and Hakodate, which is highly respected by Hong Kong people and has a large number of Westerners. I have never been there.
In my personal opinion, as a place to visit, the vicinity of Hakodate in Sapporo is more fun than the surrounding areas of Tokyo and Osaka.
For example, Hakodate, the famous night view seen after climbing, and the amazing scenery of monkeys soaking in hot springs, are all really great. For example, the winter penguin parade at Asahikawa Zoo is particularly suitable for children to watch (unfortunately, my child said they were too young to remember at that time), and it is also impressive. But here is not fundamentally different from other parts of Japan, at most it can be considered an upgraded version.
