Preparation
The trip was undertaken with a simple aim: To go on this trip Free and Easy.
"Free and Easy?!" I asked, when I first heard of that.
"I don't speak Japanese, I can only read some Hiragana, I don't know how to
drive in the winter snowy condition... How to Free and Easy?" I protested.
"You can do it one. So it's decided already," The children's Grandfather insisted.
Wah lau eh... it's a nightmare for me because I needed to plan the route, the city of travel, how to go from one point to another, where to eat, what to eat, how to communicate, and how to navigate.
A kind friend and my own sister passed me loads of materials.
I bought several Chinese Self-plan travel books, and spent sleepless nights on Tripadvisor.com to ask questions after questions.
Plane tickets
This is the easiest part.
Bought the tickets flying in and flying out online. Done.
Only trouble is, our flight out of Singapore was at 12am on the 15th Dec 2010.
And our eldest son, this troublesome fellow, would only touch down at Changi Airport at 8:20pm on the 14 Dec 2010, from a school trip to Prague.
That meant we literally had only a couple of hours to drag him by the collar from the arrival hall to the departure hall to make it for our flight's check-in at 11pm.
Tricky bit of manouevre needed. And lots of luck, hoping he suffers no delay in returning back to Changi Aiport.
Navigation
Another kind friend guided me how to buy a Garmin Oregon GPS and how to download Google Maps as overlays into the GPS and how to plot all my waypoints.
Transport
Not being experienced in driving in snow, I posted by question in a couple of forums and have gotten affirmative answers that I should forget about driving during winter.
So we opted to go by the Hokkaido JR train means of transport manjorily, interspersed by the Subway, and even a couple of bus trips.
That meant one thing - our luggage had to be really as compact and as portable as possible.
Hotels
The Chinese travel books and Tripadvisor.com had several good, almost budget business hotels recommended and we simply booked through fax. Simple enough.
The Japanese hotels didn't require booking fees. They were indeed gentlemanly.
Sight-seeings
There were so many beautiful places to visit and so many wintry sights to see in Hokkaido.
For many weeks I was to-ing and fro-ing between tens and tens of places, until a couple of friends told me to forget about packing them in. Go easy. Just choose the nice few places. Enough.
Well, that's just what I did.
Meals
Now this part is tricky. It could range from a relatively cheaper 750yen to 1000yen (S$12-16) bowl of Ramen or a S$100 per person kind of high class set meal.
This was my first time. And I could only quietly note down the prices and the varieties of the restaurants to go to and plot them into my Garmin Oregon GPS.
Activities
We knew we wanted to do Snowmobiling. But I didn't know which company to engage.
So I studied Tripadvisor.com like crazy until I came upon this one called Sapporo Snowmobile Land, apparently the biggest snowmobile company in Sapporo.
Correspondence through email settled the prices and the arrangement for transport to and fro the hotel and the mobile site.
We also wanted to soak in the famous Hokkaido onsen.
Again, some research and some email correspondence got it settled.
Camera Equipment
Now this one was the most heart-breaking part. Both SereneXMM and I love to bring all our camera bodies and lenses to shoot. But this type of family trip meant that our photographic equipment had to be kept to a minimal.
So at the end:
SereneXMM brought her Nex5 with the 16mm pancake, the Fish eye adapter and the 18-55mm.
Me, I brought my 1DMkIV with the 16-35mm f/2.8 and the 70-200mm f/2.8 on my ThinkTank belt and harness under all my cold wear.
