All Hokkaido Staff Travels- Manami goes to Wakkanai!

The All Hokkaido staff loves to travel all over Hokkaido- and we want you to see where we’re going and what’s going on! Maybe you will find some inspiration for your trip here. This time Manami goes to Wakkanai for the first time!

I usually spend my days-off at home- mostly I watch K-dramas on Netflix.

But this past weekend, I had a couple of reasons to get out of the house and travel to a small city 300km away from Sapporo.

The first reason was my birthday! I wanted to start with doing something new. The second reason was I was alone on my birthday for the first time. Originally I was supposed to spend my birthday with my husband, however, he had to go for a long business trip to Tokyo, wouldn’t be back in time. My family and friends also live far away from Hokkaido, as I am a transplant to Hokkaido. It was literally my very first birthday spent alone..!

So, I decided to go for a small adventure to Wakkanai! On the day of, I woke up at 5:30 am to take the JR train at 7:30 from Sapporo. I grabbed Sapporo’s famous sandwiches from the Sandria vending machine in Sapporo Station, and got on the Soya Express train. It took more than 5 hours to get there (Hokkaido is so big!) but my preparation for the long train ride was perfect. I downloaded many episodes of my favorite podcast, and I had the above-mentioned delicious sandwiches.

Something you do not want to miss is the beautiful Hokkaido snowy view from the train window. I was very lucky to see lots of wild animals like Ezo-deer and an arctic fox.

When I finally arrived at JR Wakkanai station I then took a city bus to Cape Soya, the northern point of Japan. It was extremely windy, and I was constantly getting hit by snow and ice all the time. Right after I took some photos, I had to evacuate to a souvenir shop immediately!

That night, for dinner I went to an Izakaya restaurant near my  hotel. The main purpose of going here was to have North Pacific Giant Octopus! Wakkanai is famous for the octopus, and I was determined to try it. I had tako-shabu (octopus shabu-shabu hot pot), deep fried octopus, octopus gyoza dumplings, and of course Japanese sake. I loved everything I had at that restaurant.

On the next day after checking out of my hotel I had some time until the train back to Sapporo, so I took a walk. I visited one of the most iconic buildings sights of Wakkanai Port, the North Breakwater Dome in Wakkanai (which is the picture in the header of this post!) I was overwhelmed by this 427m long dome, but in a good way. I also saw some locals  who were taking a walk with their dog, and running. I couldn’t go around very much because I didn’t have a car this time, but I will definitely come back to Wakkanai in the future to explore more!