Hokkaido without driving?

[martin]

Is it easy to travel in Hokkaido using trains and buses just like in Kanto and Kansai area. I don't drive so wonder if planning a free and easy trip to Hokkaido will be feasible without driving and can still visit the various tourist attractions especially those away from the big cities?

 

[deodorant]

It's possible. Most places still do have train and bus connections. However do note that the frequency is way way lower than Honshu.

For example, Hakodate to Sapporo train (among two of the most biggest cities in Hokkaido) only runs every 1-1½ hours.

Lots of the smaller areas with no train connection, you gotta depend on (also quite infrequent) buses.

So prepare to spend a lot of time traveling.

 

[samtcy]

Is it easy to travel in Hokkaido using trains and buses just like in Kanto and Kansai area. I don't drive so wonder if planning a free and easy trip to Hokkaido will be feasible without driving and can still visit the various tourist attractions especially those away from the big cities?

It depends on where are you planning to go.
Some parts of Hokkaido are nowhere near any train station.

Places that are quite easily accessible via trains are:
- Sapporo (of course)
- Otaru
- Niseko
- Asahikawa
- Sounkyo onsen (short 20mins bus ride from its nearest train station)
- Abashiri (long 6hrs train ride from Sapporo though)
- Tomamu ski resort
- Noboribetsu hotspring town (with 15mins bus ride from Noboribetsu station)
- Lake Toya (with about 20mins bus ride from Toya station)
- Hakodate (about 4hrs train from Sapporo)
- Onuma-koen (about 40mins train from Hakodate)

Offhand, these are the places I can think of. I've not familiar with eastern Hokkaido and northern Hokkaido, so there'll be more places which I've not listed.

Other than the train line which runs from New Chitose Airport to Sapporo and Otaru which have a pretty frequent departure timing of every 20-30mins or so....expect that all other train lines in hokkaido to have a somewhat infrequent train departure frequency.
From 1 train every hourly, to 1 train every few hours.

Strongly advise you to use hyperdia website to plan your train journeys for Hokkaido trip to avoid having to wait hours for the next train.
http://www.hyperdia.com/en/

 

[saffronsatire]

is hakodate worth visiting in winter? have been before during spring, packaged tour though. might drop otherwise since it's 4 hours train from sapporo.

no one took domestic flight to hakodate from tokyo, then train to sapporo and domestic flight back to tokyo or vice-versa?

 

[martin]

Thanks for the inputs.

Still at early stage of exploring a possible trip there. Basically, wanted to know first whether without driving can still do a good f&e trip. I had been on a group tour before, covering Matsumae, Hakodate, Lake Toya, Otaru, Sapporo. Hence, I am more keen to cover eastern side this time like Asahikawa, Kitami, Abashiri, Kushiro, Obihiro, etc. Just names I see on the map, but not sure if there are anything worth visiting there.

Or I can just base in Sapporo and take day or overnight trips to Asahikawa, Biei, Furano, Otaru and Noboribetsu which I have not visited before except Otaru.

Problem is I can only go 2nd half of may which means missing cherry blossoms and yet too early for lavender at Furano.