One of the main goal of our Hokkaido trip is to see the lavender in Furano. JR sells a pass called the Lavender Free Pass that includes travel from Sapporo to Furano, and also unlimited local trains in Furano. In addition, there are numerous tourist bus options that go to different attractions, but it took a lot of efforts to put together the right combinations to match the schedule of each option we chose.
Here's the itinerary we came up with :
Lavender express #1 7:55am Sapporo station 9:53am Furano
Furano mini bus 10:10am Furano 10:30am Farm Tomita
Furano-Biei Norroko train 12:14pm Lavendar field station 12:54pm Biei
Twinkle bus Biei #1 1:30pm Biei 3:50pm Furano
Lavendar epress #4 4:29pm Furano 6:29pm Sapporo
In the morning, we took a taxi to the Sapporo station. It's interesting that the driver controls the opening and the closing of the door, which is quite convenient for the passengers. With the Lavender Free Pass, we were issued half a dozen of tickets, some are for train reservations to show to the conductor, some are for the actual pass to be used for going through the gate. And we had several failed attempts to enter the gate when we inserted the wrong tickets. Thankfully, the station also had plenty of JR employees helping the confused tourists like us.
Taxi
Sapporo station
Stack of tickets
Lavender Express Train
Furano Mini Tour Bus
Finally we arrived at Farm Tomita, here are couple lavender shots we took. We also had some lavender ice cream, bought lavender soap, calendar, air freshener, etc for sovenirs. Our eyes were seeing only
purple when we left. We then walked for 10 minutes to head to the special train station only opened in the summer to catch our train to Biei. The Norokko train was definitely a fun and relaxing way to travel around Furano.
Farm Tomita
Lavender
Lavender
Lavender harvest
Train station sign
Norokko train to Biei
Norokko train
Once we were in Biei, we only had half an hour for lunch. We dashed to the restaurant across the station, had some cood noodles and oyako-don (chicken egg rice) and then boarded the Twinkle bus, which is a 3 hour bus tour.
Cold Noodle
Oyako-don
The Twinke bus took us through a roller coaster like road, the new Farm Tomita extension and finally the Furano winery before dropping us off at the Furano station. We had a very nice lady tourist guide on the bus, but most passengers were not paying attention to her, because only 4 out of the 20 or so passengers are Japanese ! Most of the tourists on the bus are from Taiwan. The Farm Tomita extension is called the Lavender East, and is actually much bigger than the Farm Tomita itself. Since we already tried the lavender ice cream earlier, we had the lavender sodas in the Lavender East this time. The winery visit was brief, enough time for some wine tasting and shopping. At the end of the bus tour, we were given a bottle of Furano grape juice, or could it be lavender juice ?
Twinkle bus tour
Lavendar East
Lavender sodas
Furano winery
Furano wine
Furano grape juice