About

I live in Sapporo. I drive here all year, including the months people are nervous about, and that is the only qualification behind this site.

It exists because of a gap I kept noticing. English-language information about travelling in Hokkaido is thin in a particular way: confident about atmosphere, vague about facts. How far things actually are. What a rental car costs once the compulsory extras are on it. Which roads close in winter, and when. These get answered with estimates, or not at all. I have read English guides that put Hakodate and Wakkanai in the same ten-day itinerary — the equivalent of seeing Edinburgh and Cornwall on the same afternoon.

So the aim here is narrow. Fewer articles, checked properly, about the decisions that cost money or ruin days when you get them wrong.

How the numbers are produced

I work with geographic data for a living, which means the distances and journey times here are calculated rather than guessed. Routes are computed from OpenStreetMap road data using an open-source routing engine, and cross-checked against what your navigation app will actually show you — which, on Hokkaido’s expressways, is based on how fast traffic really moves rather than on the posted limit. Where those two figures differ, I show both, because the gap between them is what wrecks people’s schedules.

Prices, legal limits and rental terms come from primary sources: the companies’ own published conditions, the Road Traffic Act and its enforcement orders, and police and government publications. Every figure carries the date I checked it. Where I could not verify something, I say that instead of filling the gap.

Driven, and computed

These are two different things and I mark them differently.

I have driven the roads I write about driving, and the coverage map shows which ones. The full distance table covers the whole island, including roads I have not personally driven — those figures are computed, and labelled as computed. A calculated journey time is a good number. It is not the same as having been there in February.

The same principle applies to places to stay. I have not stayed in most of the hotels and ryokan mentioned on this site, and I do not pretend otherwise. Where I compare accommodation I am comparing published information — location, access, what the operator states — not my own stay, and the article says so.

How this site makes money

Some links here are affiliate links. If you book through one I receive a commission, at no additional cost to you. That is what pays for the time the research takes.

It does not change what I recommend. Comparison tables are built from list prices I collect myself, the working is shown, and where the best option for a particular traveller is one that pays me nothing, I say so. If that ever stops being true, this site stops being worth reading. Full details are on the affiliate disclosure page.

Corrections

Welcome, and I would rather have them than not. If a price has moved, a road has closed, or I have simply got something wrong, tell me and I will check it and update the page.

— Nobby, Sapporo, Hokkaido