An author’s note to start off this blog post — I’m glad that first day’s post is done, it always takes forever, even though I pre-write some of it at home and some of it in Vancouver in the lounge. This is because it’s two days long PLUS a bunch of pre-trip commentary as well, and on top of that is during a time when I have a lot of travel and don’t have much time to just sit down and write. Phew. In addition, as you’ll see in the account below, I became sick, which pushed the timeline even further back. Not to worry though, everything is daijoubu all the way down now. If you’re just skimming and are curious about the outcome of being ill, check the very end of this post. Now to chronicle the actual trip itself!

The Narita part of today’s itinerary was short and straight-forward. I checked out at around 4:40 am, lugged my luggage up four flights of stairs (two uncovered!), and waited in line to catch the 5:02 Sunday train to Narita Airport. I was a bit ahead of schedule at this point, so I also bought a paper ticket for this trip so that I could get it stamped at the airport as a souvenir, which worked just fine.

My flight details were as follows:

Feb 08
Peach Aviation
MM 563 Tokyo (Narita / Terminal 1) 6:35 am -> Sapporo (Shin-Chitose / Domestic Terminal) 8:25 am

We were at the airport by 5:10 am, and I checked my large luggage in for the trip without incident. Right after that, though, just before the escalator up to the departures and customs area, there was a Peach Aviation lady doing an optional weighing for people who wanted to check their bag weight. I knew that my next flight out from New Chitose Airport on the 12th had a 7kg weight limit for carry-on + personal item, but I had no idea that this flight did as well, until I printed out the boarding pass and saw the same stipulation on it. And as a side note, Peach Aviation’s boarding pass was printed on what basically was a paper receipt that one might get from a supermarket or konbini.

I thought it was weird to put a weighing check thing AFTER luggage check in, since by that time it would be too late to change anything, but I guess the point was to catch people who were bypassing that luggage check as well. I elected to weigh mine though, and found that I was actually at 9 kg or so still, which was “over the limit”. This annoyed me and I argued that a lot of the weight was stuff with lithium batteries and that my luggage checkin was also just 9 kg out of 20 kg, and the lady just waved me onwards and told me it was ok. Maybe it only mattered if I didn’t already pay for the extra checked baggage fee or something. Either way, I passed onwards, and was not bothered or vetted against the 7 kg limit for the rest of the trip.

It was something like 5:40 am or so once I passed customs and got to the gate, and the plane’s boarding started at 6 am. Boarding involved getting on a little shuttle bus that drove us from the airport gate to the plane itself, where we braved the falling snow to get on board:

Our plane’s takeoff was then promptly delayed once everyone was on board, and I’m not surprised that this happened looking at the picture above. Because Japan was still being bombarded with snow, both on the Tokyo side where I was taking off from and on the Hokkaido side where I was landing, I had been actually kind of surprised that the flight was scheduled to be on time all the way until the last minute, and then even then we were only delayed half an hour or so in the end. This in retrospect was very lucky for me — Japan’s airports suffered a pretty major crunch on Feb 08-09 (local), I found out later, but because I was on one of the first flights on the 8th, and flying out of Narita domestically instead of Haneda, I largely avoided this headache.

But there were still two problems with this. The first was that I still hadn’t secured a bottle of water to carry along with me because I don’t like taking plastic bottles through customs, filled or empty, so the last time I had drank water was in the gate area while waiting for boarding. It turned out that Peach is an anagram for Cheap, and Cheap Aviations did not offer snacks or drinks for free at all for their passengers, even though the plane was delayed. They had food and drink for sale if you wanted to pony up though, but since water itself was not on the menu, just various flavoured drinks, I thought maybe the flight attendants would come by at some point to hydrate everyone, so even though my throat felt very parched and I kept on swallowing painfully, no such relief was forthcoming.

I did actually end up buying a small plushie from their in-flight menu though, it cost 2,200 yen but also came with a free pack of stickers as an unadvertised gift, so that was nice. But I couldn’t drink any of this, so my throat kept on burning through the entire flight all the way to New Chitose Airport, where I finally solved this issue by buying a bottle of my favourite Juurokucha tea from a Lawson konbini literally right outside the gate leading out of the baggage carousel area.

The second problem was one that I had alluded to in the Day 0 post as well – there was actually a reason that I had wanted to send my large luggage bag to Sapporo ahead of me, even if it meant that it would reach there a day after I did, and that was because the goal for the day was for me to take a road trip from Sapporo to Otaru for the Snow Miku 2026 festival/convention in a mall there called Wing Bay Otaru. And one of the stipulations of the event (local) was “Do not bring large luggage that could inconvenience other people.” Plus I didn’t really want to drag all my luggage around on a long day trip, on the first/second day after a long plane ride that kicked off my vacation.

In addition, when I ran my itinerary by Gemini, it had pointed out that there was a Gift booth there selling plushies, and that I wanted to make sure to arrive there as early as possible to try to get the limited edition Snow Miku 2026 plushie from Gift. I was familiar with how sought after Gift plushies tended to be from my two previous trips to Touhou Reitaisai in 2022 and 2024, and figured this one would be no different. Gemini, without the foreknowledge that I was familiar with the very popular Gift line of plushies, had also suggested that I get there as early as possible to try to get a good shot at those plushies, so that seemed legit.

The very first iteration of the itinerary had me arriving sometime around noon, after taking a train from New Chitose Airport, southeast of Sapporo, to Sapporo Station itself where I would drop off my luggage prior to the rooms being ready for check-in, and then taking the next train from Sapporo Station to Otaru, northwest of Sapporo, for the event. But if I had managed to use that vaunted Japanese luggage forwarding service to send my big bag to Sapporo from Haneda, I would have managed to take a direct train from New Chitose to Otaru without having to stop over in Sapporo, and only return there at the end of the day.

So I had planned out the train routes for this with Gemini‘s help. There were a bunch of local trains but a faster rapid train that only ran once every 20 minutes or so, and I was looking at these trains:

8:52 am -> 10:00 am
9:19 am -> 10:34 am
9:59 am -> 10:57 am

Stopping off at Sapporo Station anyway to dump off my bag was Plan B, and would have bumped me back one train (so like 9:19 am to 10:57 am). This was what I was going to do, and despite the delay I still managed to catch the 9:19 train from New Chitose Airport, however there were also alerts that trains were being cancelled on some lines to the tune of one cancelled train per hour or so, and I didn’t know which ones were affected, so I decided to er, just wing it and bring my wheeled suitcase all the way to Wing Bay Otaru and figure it out once I was there.

In a way I dodged a bullet here too, because I thought my lodging was basically right next to Sapporo Station, maybe a five minute walk away or something like that. Nope. But I had no way of knowing this yet, though to be fair I also eventually learned of better opportunities — not only does Sapporo Station itself have luggage lockers like every other station (though it’s a cold and busy station and I don’t know that I feel comfortable entrusting my large luggage to a station locker so far away from me), but the tourist information center at Sapporo Station also has a baggage holding service as long as you get back before their closing time.

Anyway, both Gemini (and ChatGPT, when I had fed it Gemini‘s output to watch the two bots feud over each other’s answers) had suggested that I sit on the right side of the train when going from Sapporo to Otaru, and they were right, as it afforded me the space to take these pictures:

The tracks whizzed by the edge of the ocean for a good few minutes between Zenibako Station and Otaruchikko Station, the latter of which was my destination, and it reminded me of that lovely station and stretch of land by Kamakura that I visited back in 2022. Many other people on the train also took the opportunity to whip out their phone cameras for this. It was very nice.

Soon, I reached Otaruchikko Station, which was connected to the Wing Bay Otaru mall via a covered but not totally shielded passageway. Although the pain in my throat had subsided a little (but had not totally disappeared) once I finally had access to drinks, I was now also sniffing and sneezing a lot, and could feel myself slowly spiralling down into a flu-adjacent sickness. It didn’t help that the temperature at New Chitose when I landed was -18°C, and Sapporo and Otaru were both around at least -10°C or lower for most of the afternoon and evening whenever I remembered to check the temperature on my phone.

The mall itself was comfortable though, and jumping ahead a little so that I can post these pictures first, it was basically an extremely long and straight mall with shops on either side, and was four storeys tall, although the uppermost level was mostly event space, unused resting space, and a cinema. Most of the mall looked like this, and I did actually quite like the vibe of this place. I could have spent the entire day here, and I guess I sort of did, minus the time transiting back and forth on trains and numbing out on an airplane.

But I needed to scout out the locker situation first. There were a few coin lockers are Otaruchikko Station, but my bag was large, and there were only four large slots, all four of which were already occupied.

There were two more large lockers at the very entrance to Wing Bay Otaru, from the station, but I initially completed missed these because they were partially concealed behind a (glass) door adjacent to the path I took to get into the mall, and well, I just wasn’t paying attention. However, according to the information desk that I spoke to later, these were the largest lockers in the mall. There were also only two of the large ones though, and they were both full as well.

And then there was another set of concealed ones tucked away beneath some stairs near the information desk in the middle of the building that I found. These were actually free, but in a tragic twist of fate, my luggage fit into it length-wise and width-wise but was barely too large depth-wise. So I couldn’t use them.

 I think these were the second-largest lockers that they had. There were plenty of other lockers along the way as well, tons of them free, but they were all for smaller articles of luggage and not for the monster that I was carrying with me. At any rate, feeling sore and tired, this was when I went to ask the information desk for help and got sent back all the way to the entrance, only to find that that set was full. At this point I just didn’t care anymore and went to the event venue itself, which naturally was on the exact opposite end of the mall:

I explained my situation to someone, who then said that it was fine, and that the event had a cloak room I could deposit the bag at anyway, they’d just have to do a search of the bag (they were searching all bags brought into the venue anyway) before I could bring it there. And oh, I guess the venue notes (linked much further up this page) DID mention that after all:

“There will be a charged cloak room at the venue; however, please be sure to keep hold of any personal belongings. Cloak charge: 1 bag (approx. 90 liter) 500 JPY“

Oh. Well then. I ponied up the 500 yen and promptly left the event space to find a washroom and get some drinks, and walk around a bit, before I casually reentered, convinced that those stupid Gift plushies were long gone anyway. I strolled around with my other two bags, casually taking pictures and collecting free handouts.

Wait.. wait a minute. That’s the Gift booth. With the Snow Miku 2026 plushie. They still had a few boxes left and no one was in queue for them at all, as there were other stores (like a Bilibili one) that were also selling larger event plushies. And it was already a little past noon. So all my bellyaching and the stress from squeezing time was for nothing, this wasn’t a particularly contested Gift plushie for whatever reason. I snapped one up on the spot. 7,000 yen was basically $60 CAD, but it was still slightly cheaper than buying it online, as even without shipping the online cost from the official shop was 6,500 yen plus 650 yen tax = 7,150 yen.

Anyway, this Snow Miku (Sweet Snow ver.) became my third ever Gift plushie acquisition. And my only purchase at this event, since it was so expensive that it ate up all the budget that I was willing to spend here. But, I think it’s worth it. I spent a couple more hours walking around the area before leaving the event. Gemini had mentioned a couple more stalls that were likely at the event that tended to give out interesting free stuff, and perhaps it took the information from people talking about previous iterations of the event or maybe it was just hallucinating, but those stalls (like a Bushiroad one) were not present. I did pick up some pretty handouts and a few stickers and stuff from the stalls that were there though. And a few more pictures for the road:

Then I collected my large bag, left the event, and spent a couple hours walking around the mall. On the 4th floor in particular, there was a quiet stretch of corridor overlooking a port that Wing Bay Otaru presided over (the attached station, Otaruchikko Station, actually means Otaru Harbour Station). The 4th floor offered a nice view of this place, though it was obscured by the literal blizzard outside (camera pictures often show more than the naked eye can see in poor visibility conditions):

The nearby chairs and tables made for a nice, hidden-away observation gallery.

And someone had the bright idea to make a rooftop.. glamping? area out here? Inside.. err outside… err on top of the fourth storey of a mall?

Look, I’m not the one who makes these decisions, I just find them and report on them. I then ended up at the cinema on the east side of the fourth storey area of the mall, where I found and took a bunch of “chirashi” posters, or movie flyers, that Japanese cinemas make for currently airing movies. The AI bots alerted me to this one when I stated that one of my goals was to collect paper ephemera, and they were completely correct here. I ended up with a nice haul. Look, there’s even one for that Melania meme movie, in Japanese.

There were some capsule machines there, and in particular one Umamusume one that I was tempted to try, but it wouldn’t accept my 100 yen coins so I guess the machine was broken or shut down or something. Their loss.

I went back down to the third floor and found a nice vantage point looking down to a Miku stage event that was happening in the foyer way below me:

I’m not a huge fan of the character or anything like that though, as anything more than a symbol of the times, despite now owning a $60 plushie of her. So I didn’t stop to watch for more than a few minutes. I was still sneezing and my throat was sore and upon asking Gemini for a suggestion as to where to eat, Gemini hallucinated a soba shop that was one full station away, nearby the actual Otaru (not Otaruchikko) station, and certainly not in the mall I was at, so that was a no-go either. However, the soba suggestion was solid, so after scolding the bot and eliciting an apology, I picked a quaint-looking soba restaurant called Shinbei situated in a “back alley” corridor on the second level of Wing Bay. And for 890 yen, I got their hot Tamagotoji Soba as a recommendation for what I should try if I was feeling a little ill.

Yum, this was great and made me feel a lot better.

I had passed a Bandai Namco Gashapon store on the way in, basially a store with a lot of those toy gacha machines, and the bots had also suggested I try a few of those out at some point, both to get trinkets for Tigey, as well as to get the sheets of paper inside those toys as collectible ephemera that I could scan — as they often listed the lineup of the toy capsule set that they were representing. This was an interesting idea, though it was not until the next day (spoiler) that I realized a much more clever and cheap variation of this, that I could actually just raid the box or tray that these places leave out for people to discard their empty capsules into, since many of them also discard the papers in each capsule. For today though, I was still urged to browse through the capsule machines here, and I am glad that I did, for I did actually find one that I was willing to pay money for:

A toy capsule gacha machine for Urban Myth Dissolution Center! I had just finished playing and streaming that game last month. And while it’s an indie Japanese game, it was still certainly not something I expected to find a gacha machine for. Score. I pulled for one and got a Jasmine keychain, and now that I’ve introduced everything in the picture, here’s a picture of my character/plushie loot for the day, taken back later in my hotel room:

I was fading hard at this point and still needed to take a fairly long train ride back to Sapporo Station. I had one more stop along the way though, and that was to a series of potential shops that could stock a folder that I was looking for. This one is credited to Gemini again, as I was looking for a folder that could hold the ephemera papers that I would collect every day on my trip. It gave me a few suggestions but strongly suggested something called the Kokuyo Novita clear book A4 folder (local), which contained a series of transparent plastic folders and whose spine thickness adapted to how many papers were stuffed inside of it. I liked the idea of this, it was a classic case of “I don’t know what I don’t know” in terms of not knowing that something like this existed in the first place, and I knew that this was not a hallucination but the result of a well-placed Google search since the website link was provided for my consideration as well, I’m just not sure how Gemini came up with the idea that this was a good idea to hold the papers for my archiving tendencies.

But it was a good idea! And I knew it the moment I laid eyes on it. And thankfully, I found the folders in the second place that Gemini suggested I search for them in the mall, the stationery section of the Super Viva Home superstore that took up a large chunk of the bottom level of the mall. I also picked up a USB A to C converter while there so that I could use my mouse on my Surface Pro again.

With all that set, i dragged myself back to Otaruchikko Station, then back to Sapporo Station, then out the northern entrance toward my hotel, passing these mascot guys along the way:

I was cold, miserable, and upset to find that the Toyoko Inn that I was staying at was actually four blocks north of the northern entrance to Sapporo Station, which itself was a very chilly station to walk through, although it was packed with people. It was blizzarding outside still, and my policy was not to let my luggage bag touch the ground if possible when the ground was wet, so I lugged it through the blowing snow and slippery ice all four blocks until I finally reached my hotel, covered in snow. I had to stand at the entrance and brush myself down to get all the white nonsense off of me while the front desk staff watched bemusedly. Then I checked in, was given a room on the top level of the inn, and I stumbled upstairs to take pictures of the room before I messed it up.

I also took a picture of the view outside the window the next morning, although it isn’t much to sneeze at since it’s facing the back of the building rather than the front:

For the moment though, I knew I was in trouble due to having chills, a burning throat, sniffing and sneezing, and just general soreness. I had also not been able to fully vocalize a hello and thank you to the front desk staff so it seemed like I was partially losing my voice. I had skipped dinner entirely but I didn’t care (as i was aware that there was a buffet breakfast in the morning), and I took a nice, hot shower followed by a quick, hot bath, made and drank some hot water in a convenient thermal flask that they had set by my bedside, turned the thermostat up to 27°C (though in practice I think that’s higher than the machine can go, so it just blows out mildly warm air all day), then went to snuggle with Tigey under my blanket in the bed to work on my blog at 9 pm.

Just kidding. I’m jumping forward into tomorrow territory a bit here, but to outline my sickness timeline, I instantly fell asleep, and then woke up at 1am again feeling pretty horrid. I was outright shivering now, and my worst fears had come true — my voice was gone and I could not make a sound. I had visions of my 2024 trip again when I had no voice at all through a good part of the Hong Kong and Guangzhou leg. Groaning, I turned over and went back to bed.

The next thing I knew, it was 5 am and I was feeling great. Strange how bodies work. The chills were entirely gone, the sneezing and blocked/runny nose was gone, and that was a good thing since I think I spent a full three or four hours outdoors in the cold the next day. Didn’t negatively affect me though. My sore throat was also completely gone, and my voice was even half back, although it was still weak and would not fully come back online for another 18 hours or so, around dinner time the next day. I would find out during breakfast the next day that my taste buds had also become a victim of that very short and quick plague, but I would also regain those around dinner that evening.

So whatever bug I picked up on the way to Sapporo, due to the fatigue and the cold and whatever else, wrecked me on the evening of the 8th and very early morning of the 9th, but then itself got wrecked by whatever defences I managed to muster, and I was 80% fine by breakfast on the 9th and 95% fine by dinner on the 9th. I do still have a very slight occasional cough (as of writing, on the afternoon of the 10th) but that’s about all that remains. I guess that’s what a good 8 hours of rest for one night does. It’s also very anime-like… Japanese rain (snow) instantly wrecks me and puts me inches from death’s door, but fast forward a day and suddenly I’m fine again.