Departure day. We caught the bus out to New Chitose airport. We were a minute or so too late for the 10.39 bus so we caught the 10.54. Was all going ok until we saw the queues for check in. A stressful 45 minute wait just to get through the bag screening, but we got through to the departure gate in plenty of time. The flight back to Tokyo was only 1 ¾ hours then we had a couple of hours to wait for the flight to Auckland. We bought some Sake and gifts, played i...

A sad day today as we pack and prepare for our trip home tomorrow. The bike fit beautifully in the box and we managed to get out and about by lunchtime. Tried out Fugetsu Okonomiyaki Bar, a neat place where you cook your own okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake). We tried the normal style and the Hiroshima style (which we cook at home occasionally). Both were great. We also loved that there was an I-pad at each table where we could enter our order and watch instructiona...

One step closer to home! Today we caught the train from Asahikawa to Sapporo. This was a lot less stressful than the last trip as we figured out a system, we weren't in any hurry and we used the I-pad to stop the child running away. In Sapporo, it took us about an hour from when the train arrived to get all the baggage down two storeys, through the train station, put together two bikes and load up ready to go. Pretty good going I think. It was raining when we ...

Chatting to another camper we discovered we are not far from the famous Furano Lavender Fields so we decided to head out there on the train for the day. We caught the 10am "Lavender Train" from Asahikawa station. It's a special sightseeing train with open windows which is great when its moving but very hot when it's not. It took most of an hour and a half to get to the Tomita Farm, the first stop of interest. Here we sampled the local fare: fresh rockmelon, rockm...

Started our journey home today, catching the train from Wakkanai to Asahikawa. It was sad to leave Soya Fureai park, a great campground, luxurious cabins, free showers, amazing playgrounds and lovely staff. We took off quite early because there were 50km/h headwinds forecast so we thought it could take a while to do the 10km to the train station. It wasn't too bad in the end. We stopped off for an early lunch at a chain restaurant (very efficient and good value) ...