Winter Archives | InHokkaido

July 26, 2019 / 16 Comments

A Winter Trip to Aomori: Mount Hakkoda & Lake Towada

Planned road closures for Winter 2024 – 2025 can be seen: here (thick red means closed; note that the 394 is closed from 6pm until 7:30am everyday so drive during the day :)).

This is part 2 of 2 of a blog post about a trip to Aomori prefecture in the winter. See part one here: link. Winter in Aomori means lots an lots of snow, during the three days there we visited the Hirosaki Snow Lantern Festival (previous post), Mount Hakkoda, Lake Towada and Mount Hakkoda again! Find out more below…

After clearing the streets of snow, it has to be taken somewhere…

The weather was luckily completely clear on the next day, without any snowfall – yet. Or at least around Hirosaki city.

As soon as we slowly closed in on the foot of Mount Hakkoda, snow was starting to pile up again. The streets were bordered by huge walls of snow.

July 25, 2019 / 4 Comments

A winter trip to Aomori: Hirosaki Snow Lantern Festival

In February 2019 a teamed up with a long time friend over a long weekend (3 days and 2 nights), which are very common in Japan, to visit the prefecture Aomori. Aomori is the northern most prefecture of Japan on the main island and is famous for getting the most snow in winter. The main objectives were the Hirosaki Snow Lantern Festival and the Lake Towada with the neighbouring mountain Hakkoda.

Warm water sprinklers on a 7-11 convenience store parking lot to hopelessly try to keep the ice at bay

In fact, the worlds snowiest city is located in Aomori. To get around the prefecture we rented a car for the three days we spent there.

We drove to the city of Tsugaru (つがる市) first to ride a stove train. Basically a normal train where food (usually fish) is sold on the train and the carriages have small stoves where you can roast it on.

May 1, 2015 / 5 Comments

Eastern Hokkaido Part 3: From Kawayu Onsen to Ikeda to “Butadon” to Sapporo

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here

We started the day off at Kawayu Onsen – on the way to the bus stop we spotted a Rotenburo (open air bath), which was charmingly located next to the road!

We were heading for the train to go south in a comfy local train..

March 3, 2015 / 12 Comments

Eastern Hokkaido Part 2: From Shiretoko’s drift ice to Kawayu Onsen

Read Part 1 here beforehand, if you like.

The next morning we woke up early as we booked a drift ice walk at 0630am. Fortunately, the weather was way better than the expected rain..

After changing into the provided dry suits we jumped right in!

March 2, 2015 / 9 Comments

Eastern Hokkaido Part 1: From Sapporo to Shiretoko

From the 22th to 24th of February, I went on a trip through Eastern Hokkaido with my friend Park. The landscape of eastern Hokkaido is stunningly beautiful and we were really lucky with the weather. We travelled by bus and JR Trains on a 3 day Rail Pass. In hindsight a rental car would probably have been the more sensible choice as there are only very few buses in remote areas (like three per day) and the JR Trains are not cheap at all – even on a 3 day student pass (20000jpy).

After around five hours on the train from Sapporo, we stopped at Engaru Station. There are only few dead-end stations in Japan, from what I have experienced – in contrast to Europe. However, Japanese trains are of course equipped to deal with that, so it is possible to rotate all seats on the train by 180 degrees! That is also incredibly useful when travelling in groups, as you can just turn the seats and then easily talk with four people!

At Abashiri, we changed trains and hopped onto the Ryuhyo (Japanese for drift ice) Norokko Train, a special, old train that runs along the coast so you can see the drift ice from the train.

January 24, 2015 / 90 Comments

A winter trip to Biei and the blue pond

I haven’t posted to my blog in almost two months! There is a lot of stuff keeping me busy at the moment and I have hardly taken any pictures at all recently. I’ll try to update my blog more frequently (predominantly with “old” stuff) in the coming weeks though.
During the New Year’s Holidays I went to Biei, Hokkaido with a couple of friends. I have been to Biei before in autumn but it was worth visiting again, especially since the blue pond was going to be lit up in the evening.
Before taking the bus to the Blue Pond close to Biei we walked around Biei’s famous Hills. Unfortunately time was rather limited as the bus only runs three times a day.

After a 30min bus ride we arrived at the Blue Pond! In hindsight we could have guessed what we were going to see..

Of course the Blue Pond was frozen and covered with snow! It is called the Blue Pond due to the blue tint of the water, for which the cause is not known yet. We were able to see some blueish water a little bit down the stream though:

Tag: Winter (page 1 of 1)