From Hong Kong To Sapporo (Day 2)

Another big day for myself as I've to wake up rather early to catch an early flight to Japan. I have been looking forward to this. Wanted to step to the land of the rising sun so badly that I barely slept throughout the night. Mom even asked me if I got into a fight with myself last night as my dark circle were really clear that morning.

We took a cab to Kowloon station to catch the Airport Express train to the airport. Kowloon station was extremely quiet in the mornings, unlike the afternoons where it can be jammed packed with people. We checked in at the train station itself and hopped onto the train a few minutes later. We arrived at the airport around 8am, enough time for us to head over to the Business Class lounge to grab some breakfast.

Now Cathay Pacific's lounge offers light meals for their passengers prior to their flight. The lounge is fully equipped with a little canteen as well as cubicles filled with comfy sofa's as well as working tables for those workaholics. There's even a place for a shower for those long distance travellers who happened to stop by.

What I grabbed is some fresh fruits from the fridge, some sandwiches (which tastes really really good that I ate at least 4 of it). A bottle of water and some orange juice to top it off.

I also managed to grab a very traditional chinese breakfast, Soya Bean milk served with Sticky Rice with Peanut in Chinese steamed bun. It tastes awesome if you combined both together in your mouth.

Flight CX580 to Sapporo at 9:40am departs right on time. It took us about 4 hours to reach Sapporo.

Once we board our flight, we were summoned by the air crew to sit in the first class as the first class was totally empty. We were so lucky as there's only 5 people on the Business Class on the flight. So I took the opportunity to fully utilize its First Class facilities and services, ordering champagne and watch movies like watching DVD at home, fast forward or rewind as many times as I want.

Lunch was served starting with very cold sashimi (yucks! but the prawn tastes extremely nice) with hot bread of your choice, a very nice line up of main course (I chose the braised chicken as the fish doesn't sound too nice) and fresh fruits for desserts. I had to skip the Ice Cream as I worried that my cough will get worse (such a waste!)

We arrived into Sapporo's New Chitose International Airport (新千歳空港) at 3:30pm local time. The sky was gloomy as predicted on the weather forecast there's light showers for the rest of the day. What caught my eyes were the All Nippon Airways (ANA) plane which were decorated with Pokemon as a part of their business partnership with the famous cartoon show in Japan.

Clearing the immigration was quick and easy. Even the customs have no point checking us after letting them know that we have just arrive for our very first day and our bags were fairly empty. Navigating through the New Chitose airport was not an easy task as we need to find the train station which was located at the basement. We got lost at the first attempt until we found the directory. Silly us...

Once we reach the train station, now we need to get to our hotel and we don't really know which stop we must take for us to reach our hotel. Atsubetsu-Ku, Sapporo... hmm... no choice. We have to ask the locals with our limited Japanese language mixed with English. "Ah! Shin-Sapporo!" as the friendly ticket counter officer informs us.

As we looked up to the huge board on top, travelling to Shin-Sapporo from New Chitose Airport will costs us 850Yen per person. Rather expensive... but the distance is rather far so it was worth the money.

This is the ticket for the train ride. One way ticket, travel on the same day, no return, 850Yen. **Gulp!** However, taking the JR Hokkaido (JR北海道) line will be my first experience and I do find it much easier to travel in Sapporo than Tokyo (which you will soon find out in my posts on Tokyo). Throughout the entire train ride, all I could see is the gloomy sky, with gloomy scenery of Sapporo... as the season moves from Winter to Spring. Once we reached Shin-Sapporo station, I found out that the hotel that we are staying; Sheraton Sapporo Hotel, 5-5-25 Atsubetsuchuo 2J0, Atsubetsu-Ku, Sapporo; was actually next to the train station.

The hotel lobby was not much of an eye catch, but the cafe, which was on the left of the lobby is! They managed to put up a very authentic European Church in a hotel!!! Surprise, surprise! I shall reveal more of this place on the coming few blogs later.

The view from the hotel room of Shin-Sapporo area to end this posting for the blog, as I will reveal the city of Sapporo on the next posting. Have a lovely day everyone.