We left Monbetsu this morning for our drive to Sapporo. It's hard to believe that we have spent 4 days in Monbetsu with the family. Of course we needed a couple of family pictures before we left.
(l. to r.) Yasuko, Yuko, Ryuichi and Eriko. We join the family.
It's May 1 and it's supposed to be SPRING!!! It isn't!!!! Instead we have more winter. The drive to Sapporo was uneventful. Miles and miles of dairy farms followed by miles and miles of snow covered wilderness. And it was COLD! Randy wanted to be in Sapporo before 3pm so he could get to the bank. That meant putting the pedal to the metal and only 1 very short stop to take care of necessities and buy some lunch to go. I took a couple of pictures on the fly just to show the landscape we were going through.
Once in Sapporo, what else - EAT. Randy wasn't feeling well so Yasuko, Granny and I went our for dinner. It was still very cold so we only walked about 8 or 10 blocks and found a small "ramen" place. Here we are enjoying dinner.
Our destination for the day was Hirosake. To get there we take the train from Sapporo to Hakodate, race across the track with all our luggage to get the train from Hakodate to Aomori (there are only 4 minutes from the time we arrive to the scheduled departure), then change trains to once more to Hirosake. It is ALL day on the trains.
We got to the Sapporo station a little early, so Granny and I went to the Six-OneHalf for a cup of coffee. I think it was the Six-OneHalf because that was the large sign over the entrance. However, the sign in the window was slightly different.
<---- If I had to rely on this sign, I would NEVER get anywhere.
Fortunately they have signs I understand ---->
We had reserved seats on all 3 trains and they were very comfortable. The first leg of the trip was a little more than 3 hours. I spent most of the time trying to recover from whatever I had done to mess up my web project. Unfortunately it was to no avail.
The second leg, from Hakodate to Aomori was just under 2 hours. This leg includes a stretch of 14.5 miles of tunnel under the Tsugaru Strait connecting Hokkaido to Honshu. At least for the moment, this is the longest and deepest rail tunnel in the world. A graphic panel at the front of the car shows the progress through the tunnel.
Randy and Yasuko relaxing in comfort.
The graphic panel at the front of the car displays information about or next stop and also shows our progress through the tunnel. Here we have emerged from the tunnel and are just about at Aomori.
There is a card at each seat that illustrates and gives the details of the tunnel. Unfortunately this card was only in Japanese.
On the right is a picture of what much of the landscape looked like especially as we progressed south.
