Epic HOKKAIDO Winter Adventure: Snowmobiling, Noboribetsu & Lake Shikotsu Ice Festival

Epic HOKKAIDO Winter Adventure: Snowmobiling, Noboribetsu & Lake Shikotsu Ice Festival

[Music] Yo, what’s up everybody? Welcome back to the channel. Today we’re still in Saporo, but today we’re also heading out to some of the more difficult to reach places here in Hokkaido. So, to do that, we’ve opted to go for a group tour. Yeah, we haven’t had the greatest weather so far, but it’s looking pretty good today. Our tour though is quite weather dependent as well, so we’re just hoping it will hold out for us. Right now though, we need to go head over to our meeting spot. So, we’ll see you in a bit. Let’s [Music] go. After a bit of a ride, we have made our first stop. Hey bud, you excited? Yes. I’ve just woken up from my nap. We’ve arrived at Sun Royal Toya and we are going to be doing an exciting activity which is snowmobile riding. I think it’ll be a first for us, won’t it? Yeah, sure will be. We will be. So, our tour guide is just getting our tickets now. It cost us $18,000 for a two-seater snowmobile. Otherwise, it’s $13,000 if you’re just a single rider. But yeah, pretty excited. A little nervous cuz I’m going to have to be doing the driving so that Peter can take all the video footage. Cameraman. [Music] Let’s get getting onto the bike. Ready for some driving. You ready for this, bud? [Music] I got to say, I think Yen’s doing an excellent job here. First time snowmobiling. How you going, buddies? I wish we could go a lot faster. All right. I’m not sure if you guys are even able to hear Yen with this loud ass snowmobile, but she’s doing good. We’re keeping pace. The sightes are [Music] beautiful. Come to our first stop now. Oh, how’d you find that, buddy? You need to take this up. Oh yeah, that was a lot of fun. The snow has started to fall though, so it’s cold. And Peter’s hands are gloveless so that you can take the videos. Hope he’s okay. It’s a little tiring on the hands just gripping, but um yeah, it’s so much fun. You did great. Thanks. I do wish we could go a lot faster if I’m being honest, but no, it’s a lot of fun. And you only have accelerate and brake, so it’s very easy to Look. Did I Where did I even go? I didn’t go as far as I hoped. Trying to That one went further. I got the [Music] target. Behind me, my friends, is the beautiful Lake Toya. We unfortunately cannot see a thing though because it is snowing like crazy out here. But yeah, it’s all good. We can imagine that it’s very beautiful underneath all that snow. If you guys are wondering how we did this day tour, we booked it through Cluke. It was about 1078 NZD per person. And I do recommend that you guys book in advance because a lot of the tours do book out quite a lot earlier, like maybe a week or two weeks earlier. So yeah, just some forward planning if you’re coming to Hokkaido. It’s very busy area. Yeah. But it is hard to account for the weather cuz you just don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Either lucky or you’re not. [Music] Even without the view, we can get these special Hokkaido yogurts. This orange yogurt sounds delicious, but there’s also strawberry and natural as well. Some of the very famous produce here in Hokkaido is the avocado milk and the avocado chocolate which I’m right next to here. But let’s give this go get a drink. How is it? Man, that is delicious. And the mandarin or orange in here is really fragrant as well. So that’s nice. Our tour stopped to get some food from the convenience store, but I ran down here just to look at Lake Toya since we missed it up at the viewpoint. Okay, we’ve only got a couple of minutes, so I now have to rush back before the bus [Music] leaves. Reunited with some time to spare. Yeah, there’s unfortunately no stop for a lunch here. And even if there was, the restaurants apparently closed today. That’s what our tour guide was saying anyway. So, we’ve made a quick stop off at the convenience store for everyone to just grab a little snack. We got ourselves some wedges. It’s nice and hot and salty. Back to the bus. [Music] We’ve got about 45 minutes for this stop and we are right in front of a very majestic Shawa Shinszan. It looks really cool with all that smoke billowing around. Eh, yeah, it looks awesome. Yeah. So, this stop is actually where there is a bear ranch, which appears to be the main attraction, but we’ve actually opted not to participate in that activity just because when we’ve looked at reviews online, uh there were some people who said that it doesn’t look like the bears have the best conditions, and they’re also kind of made to like perform for the food, like beg for the food or say thank you. And that just kind of raises a couple of questions for us, which we don’t really want to support going to see something like that. So instead, we’re just going to muck around here. Check out the amazing view that is all around us. And it’s also really good that I can start seeing some sun peeking through cuz it is cold. So glad I’ve got my ear muffs with me. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] Good morning. I’ve just woken up from another nap on the long bus ride over to this next spot here which is called Noori Betsu. And if you have been following our Japan vlogs, you might remember the Nagano vlog where we went and visited the snow monkeys. And that area was called Jigokuani, which is the same as here because it translates to hell valley. And this place has a very familiar scent to us because if you know Peter and I, we come from New Zealand. We grew up there. And so this place smells very much like rotoua. He sure does. Yeah. That rotten egg sulfur smell. But the site is incredible because it also has all the snow, which is really unusual for us to see anyway since um the North Island doesn’t snow as much. And yeah, it’s just pretty amazing. [Music] [Applause] [Music] You know what I’m imagining right now, bud? What? That this is the dinosaur ice age. We’ve got the geothermal. We’ve got the ice. All we’re missing is a couple of dinosaurs, but also the man-made walkway. Oh, yeah. True. True. Like I’m an observer in those times. Now, how cool would that have been? Yeah. [Music] [Applause] [Music] So, this valley is the main source of the town’s hot spring water. And when we were reading up about this place, we read that locals used to believe that demons stayed here because they were the only ones that could withstand the hellish landscape and the sweltering heat. [Music] [Music] I [Music] thought you want [Music] Wow, this place is magic. It really is. We are at our final stop of the Lake Shikotssu Ice Festival. And it is freezing. But we have managed to see the most beautiful sunset just before we entered into here. And we’re actually here on the first day of this festival. So, at the time of filming, it is the 1st of February. The tickets were 1,000 yen each um per adult, and we had to get them at the ticket booth. Our tour guide did help us to pre-book it with a QR code, but we started to get these paper versions instead. So, there was a lineup time, but yeah, it is pretty pretty awesome. We are going to get to see more ice sculptures and snow festival villies type stuff next um vlog because we’re going to be attending the Saffido Snow Festival which we’re really excited for. But yeah, this is our final stop of the day. I am feeling quite hungry cuz we don’t get enough time to eat. So hopefully we’ll be heading back soon and then Peter and I can grab some food. But in the meantime, let’s enjoy the sights, guys. [Music] [Music] Definitely one of the reasons why we came all this way to Hokkaido and into the winter as well, which we always try to avoid. It’s It’s for all this beautifulness. How cool is this festival? Hey, buddy. It has been pretty awesome. Yeah, it’s absolutely spectacular. I didn’t expect to see such massive icy blue walls that look like they’re like from nature, but it’s man-made, which is really cool. Or Game of Thrones. Yeah, true. It’s the ice wall. All [Music] [Music] right, guys. I think we need to wrap things up from here. We need to head back onto our bus. Yeah. Unfortunately, the day has just gone by in a flash and the moon has actually come out which looks pretty magical. Yeah, definitely. This has been a great value for money tour. We’ve gotten to see a lot of great places. I would have liked to have spent a little bit longer here, especially the ice village has been awesome. But it’s been a great day and we hope you guys enjoyed following along with us on this vlog. If you like this video, please do remember to give us a thumbs up, leave us a comment. We always enjoy reading them. And if you haven’t already, please do subscribe to our channel. We’d love to have you along for more adventures. Yeah. Catch you on the next one, everyone. See you.

We joined a day tour to explore some of Hokkaido’s most famous spots and even got to experience snowmobiling for the first time. Definitely a must-do activity if you’re visiting Hokkaido in winter.

PLACES VISITED IN THIS VLOG
⭐ Snow World Toya
⭐ Silo Observation Deck / Shikotsu Toya National Park Silo Observation Deck
⭐ Lake Toya
⭐ Showa Shinzan
⭐ Noboribetsu / Jigokudani
⭐ Lake Shikotsu (Ice Festival)

#hokkaido #japan #japantravel

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VLOG DATE: 01 Feb 2025
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