From Tokyo to Niseko

Itinerary for Families who Crave for Fun and Adventure

 My family wanted to go to the Lapland for our December holiday last year but planning for it in June apparently was a bit too late.  We couldn’t get accommodations and flights for the dates that we wanted.  Two Decembers ago, we were all set to go to Niseko in Hokkaido, Japan, but two weeks before our flight, my hubby’s passport somehow ended up in the washing machine! In short, we had to cancel that trip, forfeit our payment for the accommodation and cancel a number of other bookings.

And so for our December holiday last year, although with a bit of hesitation, I planned for a Japan travel once again – take 2!  What a winter holiday it turned out to be.  We all loved our itinerary.  It was a combination of city tours, museums, a theme park, a Star Wars movie premiere, and the highlight – snow play in Niseko.

This was the itinerary I prepared for the whole trip, although half of which was modified during the actual holiday to suit the weather and my kids’ wishes.  Feel free to have a look!

Click here: Japan2017 Itinerary Page1, and Japan2017 Itinerary Page2 if you’d like to see our itinerary.

So how did our trip, the actual itinerary, look like?   It was something like this…  Some were done according to the plan, some were added, some were shortened, and others were totally scrapped.  We basically let the weather dictate us, especially in Tokyo.  When we realised that it was sunny, we continued touring outdoors and moved the museum tours to a different day.  In Niseko, since our kids ended up wanting to do more snowboarding at Hanazono Resort, we had to cancel snow tubing and the gondola ride at Grand Hirafu.  Basically the things we kept to the schedule were the flights, DisneySea (because we already have tickets for that, also I booked them just a few days earlier to make sure that there was already a weather forecast available), the hotel bookings, transfers to and from Niseko, the snowshoeing tour and the restaurant bookings in Niseko.

Here’s our actual itinerary. Hope you’ll find some inspiration from it!

Day 1: Evening arrival in Tokyo; check in at Hilton Tokyo; wagyu dinner at Hilton’s Metropolitan Grill

Day 2: Tokyo – cruise on Sumida River; visit Sensoji Temple in Asakusa; see Tokyo City from the viewing deck of Tokyo Skytree plus the much-awaited ramen for lunch, Samurai Museum in the evening; Yamagata beef yakiniku at a recommended Japanese restaurant but with no English name, sorry.

Day 3: Whole day at DisneySea (bus to and from Shinjuku station)

Day 4: Tokyo – walk around Tokyo Station and Marunouchi business district; explore the grounds of Imperial Palace; quick lunch at Mcdo; afternoon at Museum of Nature and Science at Ueno Park; watch the movie premier of Star Wars: the Last Jedi; hotdog dinner at the cinema

Days 5: Flight to Niseko; arrival at New Chitose Airport; 3-hr road travel by SkyStation; check-in at Flow Niseko; collect snowboard; steak dinner at Steak Rosso Rosso

Day 6: Morning snowboarding lesson; afternoon snowmobile tour; Swiss cheese fondue dinner at The Alpinist

Day 7: Morning snowboarding lesson; more snowboarding; Spam and Nissin noodle dinner at the apartment

Day 8: Morning snowshoeing tour; afternoon snowboarding lesson; wagyu and oysters dinner at The Barn

Day 9: Morning snowboarding lesson; more snowboarding; yakiniku dinner at Niseko Soan Yakiniku

Day 10: Breakfast at the apartment, private transfers by SkyStation to New Chitose Airport; flight to Tokyo; yakitori dinner at some restaurant in Shinjuku area

Day 11: Brunch at Hilton Tokyo; flight back to Singapore

We tremendously enjoyed our winter holiday in Japan.   Hope this post gives you some inspiration in planning for your next winter holiday. 🙂