an excuse for catharsis

When it came to figuring out what else to do in Hokkaido after Hakodate, it was really a question of which places in southern Hokkaido I hadn't visited yet, that were also relatively accessible by bus or train. The Lake Toya and Noboribetsu route sort of made sense in terms of moving in the general direction northwards to Sapporo, but I underestimated how expensive the train fares would be. They are connected by JR lines, but the trains are mostly limited express trains, which cost a lot more than local or even rapid trains. In hindsight, I wonder if it would have made more sense to buy a rail pass, but the problem is that some of the lines aren't covered by the JR rail pass.    (Random sidenote: I miss having Hyperdia to help me plan my train journeys and fares. Google Maps is really annoying to use in comparison.) Lake Toya Lake Toya is the third-largest caldera lake in Japan, and is located within the Toya-Usu UNESCO Global Geopark. Together with the volcano Mt Usu, it prov...

I wasn't really expecting to visit Hokkaido for my first trip back to Japan in five years (the last trip was pre-pandemic). I was keen to re-visit Kyoto and Tokyo, to see what had changed in the years since I was last there, which was even longer for Kyoto. But given the possible travel dates as well as all the accounts of how overcrowded Kyoto is nowadays, I figured that I ought to find another destination. Flights I ended up choosing a multi-city itinerary via ANA (SIN-HKD via HND, CTS-HND, then NRT-SIN), which turned out to be surprisingly reasonable in terms of price, especially considering it was a full-service flight with a generous check-in baggage allowance (2 x 23kg) per passenger. The flight timings (Sunday night red-eye and Sat evening) also probably helped with the overall experience: both flights were not full, and I even had the whole row to myself on the way back.  Funnily enough, I also felt like the economy seats on the plane had significantly more leg room than my...