Hokkaido Trip

[cheefarn]

is end August a good time to visit Hokkaido?

Will the weather be so hot like SG?

Of cos not. If you can access accuweather.com now, you'd see that on average, Sapporo tops out at ard 20c during the day.... and ard 13c during the evening. And if you travel to the east and north part of hokkaido, it will be even cooler

and its considered summer at this pt in time

 

[asiafrenz]

That's my plan....

I'm actually looking for some property there too....

But in the mean time, a small house near Hirafu for an annual winter retreat will do

haha actually i was browsing quite a bit on properties in hokkaido in the past, especially in niseko but did not follow up due to various reasons like hesitating as never invest in properties ever so a little afraid to take the first step since this seems to involve so many unknown like legal stuffs lah, etc, at that times yen was still good for investing but not good for traveling

those ski in ski out properties as u can imagine can be costing twice the price of one thats further in one of the streets; it was like 90+million yen for the niseko vale from the resale mkt, cant remember the exact size of the unit but think its likely to be a 1 or 2 bedroom!

Maybe someone can start a separate hokkaido property thread and this can be discussed in detail there?

 

[jacppp]

Must stay: Otaru Asarigawa Kourakuen

It gets a private osen with a stunning view!

 

[cheefarn]

Must stay: Otaru Asarigawa Kourakuen

It gets a private osen with a stunning view!

Hmm... how muchie ? I understand ryokans that offers private onsen will be super expensive

 

[uplinkhack]

I'm renting a car to drive around in Hokkaido. Any idea how to "key in" destination? Heard from friends that the GPS can search by phone number?

 

[cheefarn]

I'm renting a car to drive around in Hokkaido. Any idea how to "key in" destination? Heard from friends that the GPS can search by phone number?

You can either enter by mapcode or tel number. Just select the appropriate option in the GPS screen. Abit difficult to describe here in text but your rental car agency staff will show u how to do it.

FYI, regardless of which brand/model of GPS headunit the agency install in their cars, only the voice guidance can be set to English. All other display on the LCD screen are still a mixture of Japs and simple english labels. It helps if u can read some Japs or at least Kanji else you will need to have lots of trial and error

And the map displayed will be labeled in Japs as well.

Be advised though GPS is not 100% fail proof. GPS signals can go wonky in big cities eg Sapporo where lots of tall buildings resides. You still need to have a map on hand and use your judgement in general.

 

[uplinkhack]

ok thanks for the tips!

 

[cheefarn]

ok thanks for the tips!

You may wish to bring lots of MP3 titles burnt into CDR to be played back during the trip. Again depending on which brand of headunit the rental car agency installed in your car, some may not offer a USB port. The only removable media accepted other than CD is a SD card reader(?!) It sure is inconvienent to transfer your mp3 titles into a SD card

Hokkaido radio stations are mostly talk shows from what I can see. Unless you understand what they're saying, they really served no purpose to us la haha. No english stations available for foreigners, other stations are J-Pop and tradtional Japs music