trains, trains, and more trains...

The trip from Shikoku and the Iya Valley to Hokkaido island and Sapporo city took all.day.long. by train.

1. Bus from Iya Valley out to Oboke Station
2. Oboke station on non-bullet train to Okayama Station
3. Transfer to special bullet train to Tokyo Station
4. Transfer to different bullet train at Tokyo Station with 3 min to transfer (yeah, totally not panicking with that "layover" time----but it turns out the trains were literally on the same track so the one we exited pulled away and the one we were to board pulled in. Noice!)
5. Bullet train from Tokyo Station to Hodate station
6. Regular train from Hodate to Sapporo.

Easy peasy. Thank god for the interwebs that helped figure that little rodeo out!

We arrived in Sapporo sometime around midnight and went straight to our hotel which was directly behind the train station---nicely done Jonathan!

The next day was exploring the city a bit and getting out of town in our rental car....which Sapporo had in droves considering it's a city of half a million.

We enjoyed the idiosyncrasies of Japanese sizes and design and set out for the lavender fields for which this area is renowned in the summer (yep, very Washington-state esque Hokkaido island is).Read more