🇯🇵Tried&Tested: 7D6N Hokkaido in Summer Itinerary

Hello Zesties!

For our maiden post here, we wanted to share the completed itinerary for our recent Hokkaido trip.

Summary of what we did in the post, and a mix of travel diary and recommendations for some locations here in the captions.

Details of the meals we ate are now up here

Let us know if you have any questions!

FYI: trip was done between 20-27 July 2024

DAY 0: CHITOSE

We call this Day 0 as its less than 18 hours and can be skipped. We arrived late night the day before while parents (flying from Jakarta) were only arriving the next morning ~11am ish. This gave us some time to explore Chitose, which is… very very quiet. We were excited to eat at Seiyouken, from the First Love Netflix series fame (its where Yae was eating the hotplate napolitan pasta), only to discover that it has closed down nearly a year back due to manpower and financial issues 😭

DAY 1: SAPPORO, MINAMIFURANO

We rented our car from Toyota Rent-a-Car, Poplar Shop and got a Toyota Noah for a family of 5. They offered Hokkaido Expressway Pass, which is super worth it if you are following this itinerary. We basically made back our investment in less than 2 days. If you’d like, you can squeeze in Sapporo Clock Tower and Odori Park on this day - we didn’t as it was hot and family couldn’t appreciate the Clock Tower, they were more concerned with spending less on parking 😅

We drove to and stayed at Minamifurano this day to make an early start to Tomita Farm the next day. Do note that Minamifurano is a very small town - restaurants closed at 4/5pm. There’s only 1-2 convenience stores and their inventories look depleted at 6pm 😅 We stayed at Fairfield by Marriott where they provided a lounge space to heat up food and hot water, overlooking a small lavender field (last pic) - dinner this day was eating a konbini haul there. 🔖PROTIP1: buy your desired konbini food in Sapporo / roadside stations to maximize your choices

DAY 2: FURANO, BIEI

If you come to the flower farms during the day, please bring umbrellas (not the transparent Japanese ones) as it can get very hot

I was super surprised to learn that Tomita Farm is completely free (both parking and entrance) and Shikisai-no-Oka is very commercial (you need to pay for both parking and entrance. Its very wide inside so you can pay to hop on a train that brings you around the farm)

🔖PROTIP2: the melons in Fukuda Melon (5min drive from Tomita Farm) are cheaper and have less queue than the one at the Melon House in Tomita Farm. I really loved the Melon smoothie at the Tomita Farm though and would recommend that. You will need to type the location in Japanese in GMaps 📍ふくだめろん直売

🔖PROTIP3: the fresh dairy (milk, cheese, yoghurt, ice cream) in Biei Farm is heavenly, and its 5min drive from Shikisai-no-oka. If you type Biei Farm into GMaps it should automatically direct you to 📍 美瑛放牧酪農場 / ㈱美瑛ファーム

🔖PROTIP4: the Blue Pond is very beautiful but it really is just… a pond. If there is a jam on the way in, and you are nowhere near to coming in 15min in - something has broken down in the parking infrastructure. We waited for close to 1hr, and ended up taking turns in driving and walking into the pond

🔖PROTIP5: Furano Pizza Factory closes at 5pm yes, but the last order ends at 4pm

The jam at the Blue Pond costed us our pizzas essentially 🥲 We ate at Furano city, that has tons more options than Minamifurano. Please note that its still a small city by Japan standards, so almost all restaurants reopen at 5pm

DAY 3: LAKE TOYA, NOBORIBETSU

Both places have ryokans and onsens. We chose Noboribetsu as it is rated Top 10 onsens in Japan and supposedly the most famous in Hokkaido. As it was our first time in ryokan as a complete family, we splurged on Dai-ichi Takimotokan - the oldest and grandest ryokan in the area - full review here We splurged to stay in the largest onsen in Hokkaido

If you are into hiking, there is a trail in Jigokudani / Hell Valley next door. Our family are onsen lover and it was a rainy day so there wasn’t any discussion about skipping the trail

DAY 4: HAKODATE

By this point, my dad had an unexplainable ramen itch that just had to be scratched, and he doesn’t like the thick ramen broth - so we ended up with chicken paitan ramen for lunch and the famous Ajisai shio ramen for dinner 😅 Hakodate is actually famous for seafood

📍Hakodate Showa Town Plaza was a shopping paradise for the family. Its an outdoor mall and each building is very big. It’s also very quiet and didn’t bump into other tourists. We spent hours at UNIQLO, GU, supermarket, drug store, BOOKOFF

🔖PROTIP6: cheapest way to enjoy the Michelin-rated Mt Hakodate night view (also ranked as top 3 nightscapes in Japan) - drive up by 4pm (they close the roads to car afterwards, so you will be have to pay for parking and 1000yen per pax for the ropeway), have dinner there and watch the sunset + nightview. The road is very windy and quite narrow so we suspect it would be closed on winter due to road hazard.

We didn’t plan this part too well (and tbh was distracted by UNIQLO and supermarket). We opted not to take the ropeway because it was ultra crowded that night, so we came back the next day. Instead, we drove around Old Public Hall of Hakodate Ward - which was also quite pretty

DAY 5: HAKODATE, OTARU, SAPPORO

🔖PROTIP7: prices atHakodate Morning Market Ekini Market are apparently cheaper than Otaru Sankaku Market (based on locals’ reviews)

🔖PROTIP8: highly recommend Chamu Seafood Restaurant (2nd pic) in the Morning Market - it has the most reasonable prices in the area, and came with the Japanese-version of banchan (3rd pic) which was a first for us

🔖PROTIP9: if you love fruits, and you are driving from Hakodate to Otaru, plan to make a pitstop at Fruits Park Niki (or any farm along that stretch). There’s many fruit farms there, and when the season is right you can pick your own fruits. We bought the sweetest cherries at one of the farms we decided to stop at. Fruits Park Niki seems to be the most accessible one to tourists, though we missed the turn to get there 😅

🔖PROTIP10: if you love sweets and LeTAO, there’s actually 5 different LeTAO stores in Sakaimachi Shopping Street in Otaru and they all sell slightly different things (and if you are lucky, offer different testers). If the queue at LeTAO cafe is too long, you can buy cake slices and eat it at home (or in our case, we ate it at Dani LeTAO where we bought more stuffs)

DAY 6: SAPPORO

We actually didn’t really buy much in the outlet, perhaps because their inventory is mostly the same aa what we saw in Okinawa earlier this year. The food court was great and had a lot of famous Hokkaido options

🔖PROTIP11: If you are a skincare girlie, make sure to visit Celule - this is the outlet version of cosme. They don’t carry a lot of products, but when they do you can be assured that the price is at a steal. When we were there they were selling Anessa sunscreen for ~1500yen when its usually ~2000yen+ outside. Do note that they don’t do tax free

🔖PROTIP12: Prices at Sapporo Drug Store in the building across the outlet are generally cheaper than Matsumoto Kiyoshi inside the outlet. They are way bigger and have more products too

🔖PROTIP13: Ramai Sapporo is amazing for its soup curry and deserves a post on its own

Not listed here but in between, we spent loads and loads of time in supermarkets and 100yen stores

DAY7: Bye Bye Hokkaido (for now!)

And that’s the end of our recommendations. We would love to come back to Hokkaido again, perhaps to explore the east side next time. If are reading this, thank you for reading until the end, this post has certainly exploded 🥹

#summerdiary #travelling #Japan #japantravel #hokkaido #triedandtested #itinerary