(Express Hamanasu will run till the end of February with changes to their schedule.
It will be discontinued in March 2016.)
With time to spare, we visited the New Chitose Airport Onsen. Tucked away in a quite corner of the airport, the onsen is truly a hidden gem in the airport. Admission is charged at ¥1,500 per adult.
We checked out of the airport onsen and got some snacks from Lawson before heading back to Minami-Chitose Station. Do take note: almost all the stores in the domestic terminal closes at 2100hrs. Lawson closes at 2200hrs.
The train arrived on schedule at 2241hrs.
We were unable to get tickets for the carpet car as it was fully booked. We had to settle for the reserved seats which was essentially your normal train seats with a much wider leg room. The seats can also be reclined further.
We were unable to get tickets for the carpet car as it was fully booked. We had to settle for the reserved seats which was essentially your normal train seats with a much wider leg room. The seats can also be reclined further.
As we would fall asleep most of the time when we were traveling on trains, the Express Hamanasu didn’t really offer a very different experience other than the fact that we will be in the train for 8 hours. The seats were way more comfortable then those that you can find on a plane and the lights on the train were dimmed after midnight. The Express Hamanasu is covered fully by the JR-Pass and I would highly recommend it if you intend to travel between Sapporo & Tokyo via train. (Until the new Hokkaido Shinkansen launches.)
We arrived at Hakodate at 0252hrs and the train stopped there (scheduled stop) for an hour before continuing on towards Aomori.