Today we're travelling across Hokkaido
From Hakodate
Which is at the end of the bullet train line
To Sapporo
For the Snow Festival
It's a 4 hour trip
I'll show you what it's like
Things we see along the way
Snacks, and then at the end...
We're going out for ramen
What could be better when it's so cold & snowy?
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There's lots coming up
Including the Sapporo Snow Festival
And my favourite:
The Snow Light Path Festival in Otaru
It was so magical
So now we're starting off in Hakodate
This ramen restaurant
In Hakodate Station
Has a vegetable ramen
It says it's animal free
I didn't expect that
This isn't on Happy Cow!
We're taking the Super Hokuto Limited Express train
I got a bit mixed up
And went back to the shinkansen station
That's Shin-Hakodate, first
But you can actually take it all the way from Hakodate Station
To Sapporo
You don't need to change like we did
So here we are at Shin-Hakodate Station
We're trying to work out what's going on here!
This snow plough
Truck?
Snow shoveller?
Is taking the snow
From over there
And bringing it round in front of the shop here
Where all these people are shovelling it
But they seem to be taking it down from the top
And compacting the snow at the sides
We can't work out what's going on!
There's these mountains of piles of snow everywhere
I guess here it doesn't get warm enough
For the snow to melt
For a long time
So it must just keep piling up
One way to survive the cold weather
Is hot drinks from the vending machines!
Pretty much all the vending machines I've seen
Have hot drinks as well as cold drinks
They have hot chocolate
Coffee in a can
Some of them have soup
Like sweetcorn soup
One of them over there has tomato soup
And I've seen honey and lemon drinks actually
Sounds interesting!
Here's a hot chocolate from a vending machine
It comes in a little bottle
It's pretty thin & watery
This one wasn't bad
Wasn't it?
It's a little thin and watery
But it's thicker than you get from, say, McDonalds
Or something like that
Where it is just brown water
Aah!
It's not super thick
And super delicious
Like you might get from a decent coffee shop
But it was really nice
Just a little bit colder than you really want on a day like this
You want it be about - at boiling point
And it wasn't quite there
But I enjoyed that one
It's got a lot of sugar in though
The one in the can was more watery wasn't it?
Yeah, I'd say this one-
I don't know if it was better
Maybe I was just looking forward to it more
But I'd definitely buy it again
And I had my first coffee in a can
I went for Boss Cafe au Lait
That was very watery consistency
Very thin
It might be real coffee
But there's no way that could be real milk in there
It would have to be thicker if it was real milk
And it was really sugary
It tasted like it had about 20 sugars in
It is nice though
Probably because of all the sugar!
*train announcement*
We're back on the train!
We're on the train from Hakodate
To Sapporo
For the Snow Festival
This one's going to take just a little bit less than 4 hours
If you're here at Snow Festival time
You really do need to make reservations
Before you travel
We just got the train from Hakodate to Shin-Hakodate
Which is the shinkansen station
And it was rammed!
We didn't have a reservation
And there were 2 carriages with unreserved seats
And they were so full up
I didn't think we were going to be able to get on the train to start with
But then the conductor made everyone move down
And we had to stand there like wall-to-wall people
This train to Sapporo's really busy as well
But we've got seats reserved this time
There's a baggage area just as you get on
But it was full up of suitcases
So we've put our suitcases up there
They don't look like they're going to fall down
Phil's going to be at the ready
In case we go round a sharp corner
Agh!
Look how snowy it is outside
We're just going through Lake Onuma
Which is quite early on in the trip
It doesn't take long to get here from Hakodate
It's a winter wonderland!
Here this is a lake
It's Onuma Park
Lake Onuma
It's all iced over & covered in snow
I wonder how thick the ice is
This train's the Super Hokuto Express
It's not quite as spacious as the shinkansen
There isn't room to put your suitcases in front of you
This is a mini, hand luggage-sized suitcase
It fits this way round
It's not bad
IT's not as good as the shinkansen though
In a few years time
They will be turning this line into a shinkansen as well
So you'll be able to take the shinkansen
All the way from Tokyo to Sapporo
And that'll be really good
I think it'll cut the journey time down a bit as well
*train announcement*
I wonder what happened here
There's a lot of trees fallen over
And blown down
This is my first visit to Hokkaido
We went through lots of unfamiliar-sounding stations
Oshamambe
Toya
Datemombetsu
Noboribetsu
It was snowy all the way along
And you can really tell that Hokkaido has the lowest population density in Japan
They just checked our tickets
They stamped it with a little picture of the train
That's the train we're on!
Cute!
So misty now!
It's hard to see anything
When you're on a long train journey
You've gotta have snacks!
I've got this wakame onigiri
Rice ball
Phil's having a chocolate doughnut
Is it very chocolatey?
It would taste better microwaved
No microwaves on the train!
There's some quite big mountains here
We've just left Toya Station
I like how all the houses are painted different colours
Can you imaging
If you lived somewhere like this
In all the snow
With the mountains in the background
So different from home
Snack time!
I've got a strawberry cream bread
It's a bread roll like the soft bread rolls you get in the supermarket
It's filled with sweet strawberry cream
Yum!
*train announcement*
We're just coming into Sapporo
Look how deep the snow is
On peoples' houses
We're almost at Sapporo
So we've done almost 4 hours on the train
It actually hasn't been too painful
Although it's not as comfortable as the bullet train
When we arrived in Sapporo
We headed straight out to the snow festival
I'll show you more in a separate video
First we went for something to eat
And as it was -12 degrees C
Nothing seemed better than a hot bowl of ramen
We went to Susukino
Always hard to say!
Which is Sapporo's nightlife district
Here it is in the daytime
That's where the ice sculptures are
The bigger, famous snow sculptures
Are in a different area
Ramen Alley is a small alleyway
With lots of tiny ramen bars
We went to Sapporo Ramen Kumakichi
It's easy to find with its yellow sign
Kuma means bear
Most of their ramen's about 1000 yen or less
They've got a few premium dishes too
Now traditional Hokkaido ramen
Is made of miso, like in miso soup
Butter and sweetcorn
It's quite rich for the cold climate
Phil went for roast pork
And I had the vegetable ramen
It's quite unusual for ramen places in Japan
To have a vegetarian option
Here the broth is made of vegetable stock and puree
So it's quite thick
And we also had a few drinks
Now this wasn't my favourite meal
But it was good
And really the best part of it was the experience
Of going to a small ramen bar
As a vegetarian
I am a bit limited in the places I can go to in Japan
Because not everywhere has a vegetarian option
So I didn't know if I'd be able to go to a small place like this
There's only about 8 seats along the counter
And the chefs cook your meal right in front of you
It's not fancy
But these small places
Are the places I'm most interested in going to in Japan
For a more authentic experience
So I hope you enjoyed joining me on this trip across Hokkaido
And starting our time in Sapporo
In the best way possible
Remember to have a look at my designs
On cakeswithfaces.co.uk
And I'll be back next week
See you on Thursday!