AirCanada881

Again a huge thanks to all who have responded here, super helpful.

At this point I'm not sure where to start. Once I land in CTS should I start by Sapporo for a couple days and then see the rest of the island or the opposite? I'm thinking since I will already be at the airport, if there are JR trains going directly to other parts of the island I can do that? Given I only have 5 full days and 6 nights maybe I should focus on 2 stops + Sapporo so 2 days in each location?

I am adverse to heat so one of the reasons I chose Hokkaido lol

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angra

I have no idea if this is the right strategy for you, but if it was me, I'd start off with a day or two in Sapporo. I'd use my downtime while in Sapporo to hit the research hard and decide where to go net from there.

evergrn

OP: are you going soon?

At this point, it may be difficult to find reasonably-priced accommodations in places like Sapporo, Hakodate and Otaru for any weekend in July or Aug. So your travel plans may largey be dictated by hotel availability. For example, if I do a search for 2 nights starting on 7/15 in Sapporo, nothing comes up. For the other weekends in July, the cheapest thing that comes up is ~30,000yen per night for a very ordinary hotel. On the other hand, there should be plenty of availability in Niseko all throughout the summer.

So it's difficult for us to plan out your trip for you, not knowing all of your travel details and your budget and so forth. So you are going to have to do some research on your own, starting out with some hotel searches. But I think you've gotten some good feedback here already. And for a 5-day trip relying on public transport, I do think a couple days in Sapporo + a couple other places along Hakodate/Noboribetsu/Sapporo/Otaru corridor is the way to go. There's plenty of nature stuff, the most accessible of which would be at Onuma.

angra

This is the exact situation that led me to give capsule hotels a try. Decent choice in a pinch.

evergrn

You are brave. I suppose that's always an option.

AirCanada881

I will be in Japan July 7-14th so quite soon. I am planning on doing Airbnb as much as possible as my budget is limited & I am travelling solo so not looking for luxury, but a private room will be enough for me. Aiming to book something in the 50-60 euros a night range.

You're right though, I got lots of feedback here, I just need to find the time to sit down & plan this, I've been constantly on the road & I See the dates fast approaching & nothing booked yet aside from plane tickets

jpdx

You're pointing out a very important issue: Hotel rates on Saturday nights tend to be crazy in Japan. I'm just booking a Hokkaido trip in late July, and I've changed my schedule around to spend one Saturday at Four Points Hakodate (which is a steal at 3000 SPG points on weekend nights) and one at Windsor Toya (which costs $250 pretty much any day of the year, so on a Saturday it's a pretty good deal compared to what that money would buy in Sapporo).

evergrn

Yeah, I just helped my friend with their Hokkaido vacation in mid July. They had specific ideas about where they wanted to go but hadn't booked any hotels. The hotel choices were so limited by the time they got around to it, that whatever hotel bookings they were able to scrounge together pretty much dictated their vacation plans in the end. We're going next month and booked hotels many months ago. Back then, I was seeing ANA Crowne Plaza Sapporo for 30,000 points, Holiday Inn Susukino for 22,000 points, both available for consecutive nights. Now, forget about it.

abmj-jr

According to Agoda, 97% of rooms in Sapporo are booked for the weekend 7-7/7-9. They show a few "guest house" rooms and some higher cost resort rooms.

https://www.agoda.com/pages/agoda/de...owToHigh&los=2

Asahikawa shows a few more rooms for that weekend and it is about 2-1/4 hours from CTS by train. They aren't cheap, though.

https://www.agoda.com/pages/agoda/de...priceLowToHigh

Hakodate is much better for the same weekend with something over 51% booked. Hakodate is about 3-1/2 hours by train from CTS, so if you are arriving before late afternoon it might make for an acceptable alternative.

Other places closer to Sapporo, like Otaru, Tomakomai and Noboribetsu are as booked up as Sapporo or worse.

You should find something quickly. Just while I was searching, almost half the rooms available when I first looked had been booked before I was finished. July is very high season for Hokkaido. I would expect weekdays to have a bit more availability than the weekend.

evergrn

Hokkaido is just crazy right now. A lot of this is due to the actual increase in tourism. Traveling by train is crazy during the summer in Hokkaido for that reason. But I also blame a lot of this on: 1).Jpn hotel industry's naivete with booking policies; 2).Tour groups taking advantage of it.

Last summer we were in a bind for our first night. There was only one hotel available at CTS for non-ridiculous price, and it was not the type of hotel we wanted to stay at. The thing is, 3 days before the night of the stay, all these vacancies miraculously popped up all at once. All of a sudden, we had all these picks of different hotels for normal sane rates, and we ended up changing hotels to Crowne Plaza for less than the original, more mediocre place. Similar thing for our hotel in Sapporo.

Japanese hotels don't require you to put down any deposit (unless it's a prepaid non-refundable package), typically not even any credit card info. At least that's the way it is if you're booking through their Japaense websites. So tour operators have nothing to lose by reserving a bunch of rooms only to cancel at the end. I believe that is what happened in the above instances. However, you can't always rely on this to happen. I was waiting for this to happen for our 3-nigth stay in Kyoto last year, and it never did.

angra

It wasn't that bad! I was there during the Snow Festival and decided to go only shortly before. Hotels for the Friday/Saturday nights of my visit were all booked up except for 30K+, but Nikoh Refre was available for about 3-4k per night. Definitely not luxury by any means, but reasonably comfortable and worth saving $500.

AirCanada881

Well this makes me glad to go through Air BNB, seems like there's more availability there.

Thanks again guys!

redleader74

This has been a great thread and very helpful for me as well. We are going to Hokkaido in October-November and we only have airplane tickets book at this moment. We've ruled out renting a car, so like the OP we'll be relying on trains and public transit as well. I had thought that many of the far off national park areas are completely inaccessible by train but it looks like that's not entirely true. I'll also look into the book Japan by Rail recommended in an earlier post, along with various weblinks that were shared.

As for hotels, I heard that sometimes booking too far out you won't find availability (I tried doing a search a couple of months back and many of the non-international chain hotels just weren't showing any vacancy for October-November). When is a good time to start booking if my trip is taking place the last week of October/first week of November?

evergrn

Start booking now.
Most hotels in Jpn are taking reservations >6 months out these days. Some still only 3-4 months out, but those places are probably smaller places and are becoming less and less.
If I put in a random date at the end of Oct in Sapporo via Rakuten Travel, tons of hotel availability including foreign brand, Japanese chains, independent hotels.

abmj-jr

Likewise Hakodate, Asahikawa and every place else I looked. I can't believe the great rates I am seeing on Japan Hotel Net for late October at hotels I have used before. Even the nicer hotels within walking distance of the train stations are available.

One note. The last time I was there, late September-early October was peak fall color time in the mountain national parks. Early November is likely a bit late for color in the mountains but lower down it should still be ok. It was quite nippy at the top of the tram-way at Asahidake (above Asahikawa) in the last week of September. In November it will likely be quite cold. There may be snow. FYI, there is a city bus that will take you up there during the season. It leaves from right in front of the JR station.