Chelsea & Dan’s Gap Year 2025

Strap in for a long update with a mild crisis near the end. In summary: we love Hokkaido! Japan's northern island is a winter tourism hotspot, so we were definitely here in the quietest season by visiting during early summer. But there's so much to love about the area, and we're already plotting a return trip (maybe in the 2050s when our savings have recovered 😩).

Hokkaido is like the Tasmania or Scotland of Japan: the cold, mountainous bit where all the best seafood and whisky is produced. So on our first night, we booked ourselves onto a food tour. We were joined by American honeymooners, Michelle and *another* Dan, and UK friends Jonas and Mary from the Oxford Imps, who happened to be in the city on the same dates as us. Weirdly, Dan and Jonas were both in Japan on the same dates back in 2019 too 🤔 who's stalking who?

After the food tour we found a tiny wine bar for a nightcap of Hokkaido wine with bread and Parmesan 🤤. It was delicious! But also extremely expensive, so not something we'll be repeating 😬

On the theme of alcohol, we spent the following morning at the Sapporo Beer Museum. Sapporo is the original Japanese beer: Asahi is actually an offshoot that they were forced to divest to break up their monopoly after WW2. We waited until a respectable midday slot to do our beer tasting. Somehow it tastes better when you've learned about it first... the flavour of education?

After lunch we reconvened with our food tour friends outside a department store to watch a big parade. Unbeknownst to any of us when we booked Sapporo, our dates coincided with the Hokkaido Shrine Festival. This features 1,000+ people dressed in Heian period costumes, including intricate parade floats, drummers, dancers, geisha performers, and plenty of confusing symbols. Very cool! Lots of the men wore tiny hotpants while pushing these big floats around—it's no wonder rugby has caught on here.

On day 3, we caught a local train down the coast to Shiraoi, where we poked around Upopoy, the National Ainu Museum. This was built in 2020 (very swanky and impressive) to celebrate the Ainu heritage on Hokkaido. The Ainu people were the indigenous community up here, before the ethnic Japanese from the main island took over in the 1800s. Most Japanese people don't even know this happened; it's not talked about or taught in schools. But the indigenous culture and art is reminiscent of North American and Pacific Island cultures. A Polish ethnographer called Bronisław Piłsudski has his statue here: he was exiled to Hokkaido after trying to assassinate the Russian Tsar, and ended up becoming an early expert on Ainu society. What a life! We also tried a traditional hoop catching game, at which Dan was awful but Chelsea demonstrated a unique genius. Fingers crossed for when Ainu stick-and-hoop catch becomes an Olympic discipline 🥇

Next, we visited Noboribetsu, a town famous for its Jigokudani (valley of hell). This is a volcanic area with hot springs, sulfur geysers, and importantly for us, onsen bathhouses. There were multiple-choice quiz signs along the path, at which Chelsea again destroyed Dan. It was a humbling day for him. We hiked around the valley and casually caught sight of a couple ‘tanuki’ (Japanese raccoon dogs) on the paths. At 4pm, when onsen entry prices were reduced, we headed into Takimotokan, the largest on Hokkaido. No pictures are allowed, but it's huge! Men and women have separate areas, and each had about 12 pool-sized tubs with different mineral benefits, temperatures, etc. They had sulphur waterfalls, walking baths, lying baths, outdoor baths, dry and humid saunas, bubble baths... we ended up spending 2.5 hours, but could have been in there much longer.

The trouble with spending that long is that public transport back to Sapporo is sparse in the evening, and Noboribetsu is a tiny town without much to do, especially in the low season. There was only one restaurant we could find that had lights on, and we had to bang on the door to get him to let us in. But what good luck that we did: it was the best meal we've had in Japan 😅 we basically ended up with a private dining experience, where the chef prepared an incredible omakase spread, with marinated tuna, ten sushi pieces, miso soup, overflowing sake, noodle dessert and matcha tea. He then showed us his katana collection, and gave us a 2020 Olympics commemorative coin 🥹 All of this for about £60, which is more than our average dinner budget this year but worth it for the story. We caught the last train home, very satisfied.

Our last day was a bit different. We had big plans to go on another daytrip, but when Dan was cleaning his ears in the morning, the cotton bud came out without the cotton on it 🤡 He could feel it in his ear, but we couldn't see it to pull it out with tweezers. Cue a whole day of trying to navigate the Japanese healthcare system to find an ENT clinic with open appointments who could pull the thing out. After visiting five places and trying to communicate in broken Japanese what was wrong ("Are you ear doctor? This inside ear. Little bit hurts"), then sitting 90 minutes in a waiting room, a doctor spent a total of two minutes pulling it out for the princely sum of £22 for wasting their time. Honestly, might not be a bad thing to have a very cheap day where we didn't do anything, so our bank balance can recuperate a bit.

That evening we took a cable car up Mount Moiwa for sunset views across the city with Jonas and Mary, then went to a restaurant called Bar DAN (obviously) for traditional Hokkaido soup curry. They offered spice levels from 0-10, where 10 was labelled as 'Super Hell'. We opted to play it safe with a 'Fiery' 5/10 instead, and we're glad of it: this was still one of the spiciest meals we've eaten all year. We're still suffering 🥵

All in all, we've had a great time in Hokkaido and would love to return some time in winter or autumn with more time to explore. But for now, a long train back south to the rest of Japan! 🗾Weiterlesen