I left Tokyo early yesterday morning to embark on what became a 12-hour journey to Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido.<\/p>\n

Just as I was getting used to the cool climes of the Kanto region, I braced myself for even colder weather. While the southern half of Japan is already welcoming Spring, northern region seems to be still stuck on Winter.<\/p>\n

Halfway through the 3-hour shinkansen ride to Aomori, the snow-capped mountains were replaced by snow-covered plains. The snow was blindingly white, and it thrilled me to see such a stunning view — it is the first time I’ve seen snow.<\/p>\n

Snow, of course, mean cold weather. Very cold. I was wearing a tank top, a thermal long sleeved shirt, a hoodie and a thick coat and I was still shivering in my boots.<\/p>\n

Luckily, I had the foresight to book a room at the Toyoko Inn that’s just down the road from the JR Sapporo train station. It’s a lot more expensive than the hostel I was eyeing, but the location proved invaluable as it can be really tough to walk outside when it’s snowing.<\/p>\n

Then again, after reading my friend’s complaints about the sweltering heat of Manila, I suppose I shouldn’t be whining about the cold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Snapshot Japan: Snowy Sapporo, a photo by nina_theevilone on Flickr. I left Tokyo early yesterday morning to embark on what became a 12-hour journey to Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. Just as I was getting used to the cool climes of the Kanto region, I braced myself for even colder weather. While the southern half […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1681],"tags":[1447,1684,1683,1685],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2877"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2880,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877\/revisions\/2880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}