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00:02A.M.A. from神戸 to the airport
00:22If you need any assistance please wait for a moment
00:25A.M.A. from the airport
00:28A.M.A. from the airport
00:55A.M.A. from the airport
00:57A.M.A. from the airport
01:02A.M.A. from the airport
01:21A.M.A. from the airport
01:25A.M.A. from the airport
01:25Hey guys
01:25We're back
01:26We're back
01:27Back in central Japan
01:28After a couple of short flight delays
01:30We're back in central Japan
01:32So
01:34Hokkaido
01:35Some observations about Hokkaido
01:37What a beautiful place
01:38So for a couple of decades
01:40We've been talking about going there
01:42Because
01:42Everything we see
01:43About Hokkaido is always beautiful
01:46And
01:47Just always wanted to go there
01:48and we just never have so finally got there and it was every bit as amazing as as we sort
01:56of
01:56expected and more probably all sorts of things that we didn't expect so just beautiful so some
02:02observations this the cities i mean the biggest city sapato which is only two million people so
02:08it's not very big um but it the city has a similar feel to the cities in the rest of
02:14japan
02:14but once you leave the city and get out in the countryside it's just so different it's just
02:20so different as those of you who've watched the videos that we the last few weeks of videos that
02:25we just released about hokkaido just uh beautiful so different very what was striking when we were
02:33preparing to go we're using google maps a lot to actually work out where we're going to go and
02:39and and the the landscape you know if you look on google maps it's all circles because it's all
02:48volcanic so hokkaido is covered in volcanoes so the the mountains are all classic volcano shapes like
02:56fuji and the lakes most of the lakes are calderas so they're big circular um circular holes basically
03:06with often with a perfectly circular island in the middle just just amazing really like
03:12you we we often imagine as we're traveling around dinosaur country you know and i mean there are a lot
03:20of dinosaur fossils in in hokkaido but that's that's the sort of the feeling you get the land is so
03:25feels so new and alive because it's still moving you know it's still changing we showed you some
03:30examples of that on those videos is you know because of the volcanoes and the and the activity
03:36the the volcanic activity and the earthquake activity and so on the land still moving and just
03:41gives you this feeling of being really new really young countryside just imagine seeing dinosaurs walk
03:47through it just beautiful and then just big open spaces that we don't usually see uh in the rest of
03:54japan you know that that usually you have sort of small as we've showed you before central japan in
04:01particular lots of small rice fields you know and every every piece of spare land has a rice field on
04:08it um or or or dense woodland you know so most of central japan the actual central part of central
04:16japan
04:17um something like japan has some enormous number it's like eighty percent of the land in japan
04:24is unusable because it's all mountains um so that's what we usually get is we usually get the the forests
04:30on the mountains and then anywhere where there's a bit of open space you usually get lots of rice fields
04:36or or other sort of uh crops whereas in hokkaido you just get these huge open spaces um with just
04:45nothing you know and just just grass just grass we showed you a few examples that we're trying to
04:51capture that on video just hard to get the the image across exactly how how big the open spaces
04:57are relatively i'm just going to throw this into somebody commented i mentioned on one of the videos
05:03about about it being fairly isolated or very um uh sparsely populated or something and someone made a
05:11comment about in america you know it's like it's in america that's not sparse compared to america or
05:16something it's not sparse compared to australia either you know australia has some of the remotest uh
05:22pieces of of land on the earth you know and some of the biggest uh uh farms and things like
05:29that
05:29so we weren't comparing it to america or australia we're comparing it to the rest of japan
05:33so compared to the rest of japan uh you know hokkaido is very sparsely populated particularly as you get
05:41the northern half of hokkaido is the southern half is a little bit more populated a little bit more
05:47you know a few more people but the further you go north the sort of the sparser and sparser it
05:52gets
05:52and those open spaces you know again central japan usually the fields are fairly small so the farmers
06:00have pretty small tractors we've showed you before harvesting and and sewing and uh planting and so on
06:06pretty small tractors whereas up in hokkaido they've got those massive big tractors because they've got
06:11huge big areas so just amazing so that was really striking um you know the trees beautiful trees
06:18we kept calling them christmas trees but whatever those trees are they're all over the place up there
06:22it's just beautiful um very fresh because it's so sparsely populated and it's you know so far north
06:30beautiful blue skies at night really clear skies um you know really fresh air clear water um those lakes
06:38were just amazing we showed you a couple examples of that just amazing clear water
06:43so just just beautiful absolutely beautiful as far as when to go there i mean we now we want to
06:49go in
06:49winter right uh our thinking was we wanted to go when we did um at the beginning of or end
06:58of spring
06:59uh the thinking was that if we went in winter that it would be too hard to travel around and
07:05we were
07:05right it it there would have been a lot of those places that we went to we wouldn't be able
07:09to go
07:09there in winter because the roads would have been closed happens every year and that was our worry is
07:14that if we had that plan to do that big tour of the right around the the island uh if
07:19if we got heavy
07:20snow like they had last winter you know last winter and we see every year really we see on the
07:26news here
07:27oh in hokkaido this week you know all the highways were closed last year the highways got shut down
07:33because they had meters of snow that they couldn't get rid of and the airports shut down and people
07:38cut uh stuck in there in new chitos airport for days sleeping in the airport because they couldn't
07:45get out because it just closed down they had meters of snow they couldn't take take off or land
07:51so that's why we knew if we went in winter we'd like to see the the snow the ice festival
07:57and some
07:58other things that they have happened there in winter and just see the place in winter covered
08:01in snow but just logistically you know the chances are that we just wouldn't be able to get around
08:08so that's why we went when we did and it was a really good decision because it was much easier
08:13to travel around a lot of those if you're thinking about doing what we did with the camper apparently
08:18a couple of people got interested after they saw how we did it with the camper we did it that
08:22way
08:23because we knew that lots of hokkaido was isolated so our thinking was if we had food on board and
08:29and water on board and beds on board that if we ended up somewhere really isolated which we did
08:35that we didn't have to worry about finding somewhere to stay so that's why we did the the camper thing
08:40and it was a really good idea we'd recommend it however um most of the campsites the good ones that
08:47we showed you uh they open usually uh at the start of may or in the middle of may um
08:54so that's the
08:55other thing we found when we researched before we went most of those really nice campsites are just
09:00closed from it's like october or november through to may and half a year basically and then they open
09:08in may and stay open until the snow gets too heavy so you know may june july august maybe would
09:16probably be
09:16the best time if if you want to do what we did and travel around or even if you just
09:20want to travel
09:21around by car or or or even travel around by bus in a tour you know if you want to
09:26go see the place
09:27if you want to see hokkaido and travel around hokkaido you know that would obviously be the best time to
09:32do it because winter you've got a good chance you just might get stuck and not be able to go
09:36anywhere
09:37so so we're really happy that we did that um on the on the camper thing too it was that
09:43was absolutely
09:43excellent the combination of those really good campsites uh that were just amazing and then those
09:50little road uh uh stations um that saved us a few times we're in the middle of nowhere and we
09:58just
09:58come across one of these little just basically a car park with a toilet block and we just pull in
10:03there and stop and stay there and and that worked really well um we saw when we're researching
10:09people that had had traveled by camp are just in japan in general but but also in hokkaido lots
10:15of them talked about not being able to get rid of their rubbish and probably it might be because
10:20they're not used to living in japan perhaps but we we're we're used to separating our garbage it's
10:26just what we do here and so so we always separate our rubbish into the different categories and because
10:31we had it already separated now and again when we pulled in somewhere we'd find a row of rubbish bins
10:36or some of those campsites the good campsites had places where you could put your rubbish and we
10:41just tossed it so a lot of people when if you just do decide to do what we did and
10:45do the camper thing
10:46you will come across people talking about how it's too hard to get you rid of your rubbish that a
10:51lot
10:51of people kept saying that no problem at all keep it all separated into the different categories you
10:56know pet bottles and and cans and things and then when you do get the opportunity at a campground or
11:01a
11:01road station or something and then suddenly you've got a row of rubbish bins you can just throw it all
11:06and in there and get rid of it so it wasn't really wasn't a big deal really wasn't a big
11:10deal
11:10um oh if if you're not going to do the camper thing or if you want hotels there was one
11:16particular night
11:16we just couldn't find anywhere it was sort of starting to get later and we really wanted showers
11:21and um we we we started calling hotels so we're calling hotels at the at this next uh it was
11:30um
11:30um abashiti abashiti where the prison is and the ice thing and all that stuff that we showed you
11:38and we started calling hotels in abashiti and they're all saying they're all saying oh sorry
11:44um do you have a booking no oh no you need to book at least 24 hours before to get
11:48a room
11:50and it was this was not this was not holiday season we purposely didn't go in holiday season
11:55because we knew that everybody would be busy that's why a lot of places we went to showed video there
12:00was no one there because we purposefully do that when we go places we go in there's no one there
12:05and so the hotels weren't full and they're all just saying i know if you don't have a reservation
12:10at least 24 hours before you can't get a hotel so keep that in mind if you if you do
12:15want to stay in
12:16hotels in Hokkaido make sure you book your hotels at least 24 hours before because they just kept
12:21knocking us back probably different in Sapporo and the in the big cities probably but abashiti let me
12:27tell you we called so many hotels and they all said the same thing and then we passed our onsen
12:33old onsen and and it had because a lot of those onsens have like hotels part of it you know
12:39and so we
12:40we stopped this old onsen and i walked in with my wife and and she was walking ahead of me
12:47and she
12:48walked up to the counter and said we're looking for a room we'd like to stay in a room because
12:51she
12:52loves the onsens too so the idea was to book a room or stay in the room for a night
12:56and then and
12:57they could use the onsen and stuff because i'm not really into the onsen i'm not into nuding up with
13:02the old men but um but the ladies are so that would have been perfect and we would have had
13:07showers
13:08there in the room that i could have used and it would have been all good and and the guy
13:13behind
13:13the counter um she's she's asked him and he's looked at her and then he's looked over at me
13:19and then he's looked back at her and he could see him sort of thinking for a second he said
13:22oh no
13:22sorry we don't have any rooms we don't have any rooms and this is one of those really old it
13:27was a
13:27really old onsen and you know the classic old hotels that have have the little pigeon holes for
13:33all the rooms numbered you know 101 102 103 104 and all the rows of rooms and and most of
13:41them
13:41had their keys in there right because you know that old style of hotel where you book in they take
13:46the key out of the pigeon hole and give it to you so you could see there was like you
13:51know 20%
13:51of his rooms were actually taken because the keys weren't in there and and the 80% of the rooms
13:58had keys in the pigeon holes which means that his place is almost empty and oh no sorry we don't
14:03have
14:03a room he said after looking at me and and so i i i looked at these keys and i
14:10said really and it was
14:12so it was off season and it was a it was like a wednesday or something and so you know
14:17it was clearly
14:18obvious there was no one around his car park only had a couple of cars in it and and really
14:24really
14:25no rooms okay thank you very much so that was clearly uh don't want the foreigner in my onsen
14:31experience it was clear it was clear um the others weren't the others just their policy because my wife
14:37was calling they had no idea there was a foreigner in the car so so the others were that was
14:41just their
14:41policy that if you if you don't book 24 hours or more before you can't have a room assuming they
14:48must have some system where you book you know two days before they can prepare your room for you or
14:54something but um but yeah i had to mention that the the the the racist guy the bigoted guy didn't
15:00want a foreigner in his in his onsen so that night was actually the night uh those of you who
15:06followed
15:06the videos uh that video was called uh the last last free camping night or something like that and
15:14we eventually just found this this uh road station that was just a car park with a toilet block and
15:21it's so quiet up northern japan there's a northern hokado there's just almost no traffic and we stopped
15:28in there it was just dead quiet absolutely dead quiet this will do this will do and we just made
15:33ourselves comfortable and just stayed the night there so it was a bit disappointing because we really
15:38wanted an onset in the shower but but it was all right we survived it we survived it so yeah
15:43again
15:43another event advantage of the camper um but if you decide to go and stay in hotels instead make sure
15:50you book at least 24 hours before and don't be a foreigner that was the first time first time
15:56i experienced that for a long time i had a similar experience about 20 years ago in kyoto i walked
16:03into
16:03a ryokan an old japanese inn in in hokado and the old guy came out and saw me and went
16:10oh mata
16:12kaijin mata so again foreigner again a foreigner something like that he said again a foreigner
16:19ah and he he let me in he let me let me stay but yeah he made it clear he
16:25wasn't impressed so it does
16:27happen it does have it's cool it's not a big deal we've talked about this before we've made whole videos
16:31about this topic before um so yeah that's sort of pretty much everything else you've sort of seen on
16:37the videos is there's not really much more to add but just highly recommend it it's just such a
16:43beautiful place um and just so different it really is very different from the rest of japan it really
16:50is i haven't seen any countryside anywhere else in japan that's similar with those rolling hills
16:56you know no fences a lot of those um cattle farms will just have these rolling hills where where they
17:03it looks like they they harvest the like some grow some sort of grass and harvest it and as a
17:09result
17:09of that they just don't have any fences so just beside the road it just opens up and it's those
17:14rolling hills we've tried to show you on some videos just rolling hills of just grass just beautiful
17:20just beautiful you know and now and again they'll they'll fence them off with an electric fence
17:26and put the cows out there you know and that's the other thing cows you know we don't sort of
17:30usually cows in central japan are kept in sheds and you don't sort of see them out in paddocks
17:36but in hokkaido they make a big deal about this too at the marketing of um that we see here
17:42in
17:42central japan we see advertising for hokkaido milk and hokkaido ice cream and hokkaido butter and and
17:48produce from hokkaido and they always market it with those images of the big open spaces and the
17:53those black and white cows out in the countryside and and they really market that they really push that
17:59image because that's the truth that's the reality of it you know the the cattle the cows in central
18:04japan tend to be in sheds you don't sort of see them outside whereas hokkaido obviously in winter
18:10they must be in sheds but in in you know when the greens the greens out the cows are out
18:15out in the
18:16fields it's beautiful and the animals that's the other thing the animals the foxes fox so it's just
18:23like a constant game as we're driving around fox fox you know uh deer the deer what we say in
18:30that
18:30video it's 90 000 deer or whatever i can't remember what it was whatever it is it's in that video
18:37just an incredible amount of deer everywhere we went you just see you see little groups of deer
18:43little herds of deer all over the place all over the place and those signs warning about the deer
18:47all over the place the bears that was a classic the the the lady of the house spotted the bears
18:54she's got a real good eye for animals we're drawing along she said what's that there's
18:58three black dots up on the hill and it just didn't look like deer it didn't look like cows
19:03so we stopped and got the 4d camera out and zoomed it in that's that video we made about the
19:07bears
19:08and there they were up on the hill digging a hole trying to eat something so amazing um squirrel
19:15we saw a squirrel at that prison when we're at the prison there was a squirrel in the tree never
19:21seen a squirrel in japan we get um what do we get here itachi itachi around ferrets we get ferrets
19:29here
19:29in the garden then we get animals like that but never seen a squirrel so yeah squirrel in the tree
19:35the prison so just beautiful there and the birds you know that you might have seen that forest the video
19:41about the forest and sunset were just players outside an onsen and it's just this forest and just the
19:47bird life so yeah the wildlife is just uh absolutely beautiful the nature in Hokkaido most of the videos
19:54we made about Hokkaido ended up on the nature and environment playlist because that's what they were
20:00just beautiful nature beautiful countryside and just beautiful imagery and just one postcard image
20:07after another everywhere we went that's just amazing so so yes so you might get the impression that we
20:13loved it we really did we really did love it and we'd like to go back the idea we sort
20:18of kicking around
20:19the idea um sort of have no money now that was our first holiday big holiday in 12 years um
20:25because we
20:26sort of don't have the sort of money to throw away on holidays usually so that was our big that
20:31was our big
20:31holiday um but sometime in the future if we get the opportunity we'd like to go back in winter aware
20:38of the fact that we wouldn't be able to travel around much obviously so probably support all for the ice
20:44festival i've got an ice festival there where they make things out of ice all sorts of carvings and
20:49statues and it's quite famous but yeah a bit of a problem in winter because it's really popular around
20:56there for for skiing so the tourist industry in Hokkaido in winter is massive so sort of not real
21:04keen on that so not really sure how we'd achieve this yet um keep that in mind too if you
21:09decide to go
21:10in summer like we did and do the travel round thing try and go when it's not busy season because
21:16Hokkaido
21:17is really famous for tourism you know they get a lot of tourists and buses and all that sort of
21:22thing so
21:23we sort of picked we we the season had sort of opened so the the campsites a lot of those
21:28places
21:29we went that fossil tour that we did we were their first customers for the year that was their first
21:34day that they were trading for the year the campsites a lot of those campsites we stayed in that was
21:38their
21:38first week for the year so we went at just the start of the summer season or the green season
21:45whatever
21:46you want to call it we're just there for the very start of it just before it got busy so
21:50that's why
21:50most of those places we went there was no one there we do that on purpose you know those who
21:55have been with us over the years will know places that we go quite often people say why was there
21:59no one there we do that on purpose you know we'll go to places during the week monday to friday
22:04instead of the weekend you know we go when it's not school holidays um and it's not peak season
22:11because you know Hokkaido is popular so that a lot of those big campsites that were beautiful and empty
22:16um you know in the peak season would be full of people which would be a totally different experience
22:20wouldn't it so i mean our whole goal was to enjoy the the tranquility and uh the uh isolation and
22:29the that sort of thing so we didn't want to be doing that with hundreds and hundreds of other tourists
22:33so that's why we went when we did and it was just right it was just right highly recommend it
22:38to you
22:38that was you know about the middle of may was perfect it was absolutely perfect and i imagine
22:44right now it would probably be hugely busy because it's a sort of a cool escape for those of us
22:49who
22:49live in the rest of japan uh escaping up to Hokkaido in july and august you know when it's hot
22:54here it's
22:54starting to get humid here it's rainy season it's really humid so people do escape from here and then
23:00we've got all the tourists around the world that like to go to Hokkaido it's sort of famous you know
23:05and in winter same thing with the skiing you know a lot of those places that we went to
23:11in winter would be just full of people you know because the the skiing is huge in Hokkaido people
23:17come from all around the world to go skiing there so so anyway enough i could talk about this all
23:24day
23:24i love that place i certainly love that place so it's excellent those of you haven't checked out the
23:29videos yet um i made sure i included Hokkaido in the title of every one of them so you can
23:35just
23:35go back through our videos if you want to or if you go to the channel page and just search
23:39Hokkaido
23:39all the Hokkaido videos will come up uh don't know how many there are uh must be about 40
23:48so anyway i hope you guys enjoyed it they weren't very popular those videos you know they were getting
23:52two or three hundred views most of them so you know i thought i thought people might be more into
23:57them than they were but they weren't um some of our patrons and and supporters and subscribers
24:03um sort of enjoyed them you know some of our regulars sort of enjoyed them but yeah you know that
24:09sort
24:09of stuff's not so popular on youtube is it so so yeah people didn't get into them as much as
24:14i thought
24:14they might we spent a lot of time shooting video and editing videos so that we could sort of share
24:19it
24:19with everybody but yeah most people weren't sort of into it too much uh maybe people just picked which
24:25ones they they're sort of half interested in but uh but we loved it and most importantly our our patrons
24:33and our paypal supporters seem to enjoy it our coffee supporters so they're the guys that that um you
24:39know if they're happy we're happy and we're definitely happy we had a hoot an absolute hoot
24:44so yeah Hokkaido highly recommend it to you so now we will return to our usual programming from central
24:51japan for now more videos coming soon
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