Tarto in Japan

Summer is approaching, and since summer usually means travel and considering it's been a while since I last wrote about my trips, I've decided to start relating my "Hokkaido tour" of last september. Let me recap the context: after I received the official job proposal, I had a few weeks left before I would start working, which I used to travel around and enjoy my last moments of freedom. My first destination was Hokkaido, where I had wanted to go for quite a while.

Let me start with geography notions: Hokkaido is one of Japan's four main islands. Located at the extreme north, it is the second largest (20% of the total area) but comes in last in terms of population (only 5%). This means that there's a lot of nature, which completely contrasts with a megalopole such as Tokyo. There are many lakes, national parks, volcanoes and wild animals, and it's a delight for nature and calm lovers. I'm not even talking about onsens, I had my best experiences there!

Because of its location, it is overall colder than the rest of the country but it's still ok, as the temperatures drop below zero in winter but reach about 68-75° in summer. From ski to hiking, there's a broad range of activities available depending on the season.

As far as I'm concerned, it was some sort of a dream to go there and I highly recommend it to any traveler: you will find a more authentic and preserved Japan, and you will get a much more original experience than most tourists who just stick to the usual, popular destinations. On the other hand, Hokkaido is harder to access than central Japan. First because of the language, as English is rarely spoken. It's hard for me to tell, but I really think that remote places will be very hard to get to and fully appreciate without basic notions of Japanese. Besides, since there are no Shinkansen lines, it takes significantly longer to travel around...but Hokkaido is best enjoyed with time on your hands...

As for me, I only had ten days which is really too short to see everything: with another week, I could have visited all the interesting places and with yet another one, I could have done one of the most famous hikes out there. I hope I have another opportunity to go there again...

I also had to face up another problem: I travelled in september, which precisely matches the typhoon season. Even though I would adjust my itinerary everyday according to the local weather forecasts, I still couldn't avoid several days of rain, and there were a couples places I could not totally appreciate because of that.

However, I still managed to get a lot from that trip, even if I had to sacrifice quite a few hours of sleep to rethink my itinerary every single day!...I'm keeping the pictures for the next posts which will describe every city, park, onsen I went to.