Tokyo to Sapporo

Today was our first big train journey.

We left Ueno on the 9:02 northbound Shinkansen, for its three hour run to Hachinoe. After about one hour we were seeing snow on the ground, and by the time we got there it was a thick covering. It was hard to take good photos because of the sound barriers, trees, poles etc getting in the way, but we tried.



The second leg took us through the Seikan Tunnel under the Tsugara Strait and onto Hokkaido, Japan's most northerly island. It was strange to see beaches made of snow, not sand.


We changed again at Hakodate,


and arrived in Sapporo at 19:00, greeted by a flashing sign which said it was -1degC. We had tea at a restaurant at the station, and caught a cab to the hotel.
The room is another shoebox, but at least it has a bed, a table and chair, and a shower over the bath.