This incredible train line will soon be abandoned ❄️ HAKODATE → OTARU

I rode the JR Hakodate Main Line from Hakodate to Otaru in Hokkaido, Japan. Part of this train line will be discontinued when the new shinkansen to Sapporo opens in 2030. But the section from Oshamambe to Otaru, across the Oshima Peninsula through Kutchan, offers jaw-dropping scenery that you won’t be able to see from the replacement bus (and definitely not from the shinkansen, which will mostly be in tunnels). I rode this route in the height of winter, when the mountains, valleys, rivers, farmhouses, and fields were all covered in deep snow. The remote, rural scenery was genuinely astonishing. And it’s a shame to think that it largely won’t be seen in a few years. It’s a loss for anyone who loves seeing the views from a ragtag little local train. But I managed to capture it in this video!

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Music provided by mellowstu and Lynne Publishing / Pond5

Okay, welcome to Hakodate Station. I’m going to ride a train from Hako— actually, let me explain this. I’m going to ride *trains* from Hakodate to the city of Otaru, a little bit north of here. And I’m not doing it in the normal way that every online route finder says you should do it.

Because I want to see part of the train line that is going to be discontinued pretty soon. It’s a very strange little line that winds through the snowy mountains. It’s going to be really, really fun, I think, but it’s kind of ragtag. So, anyway, I’ll explain more when we get on board.

Right now, my train is leaving here, so I’m going to go in and find my platform. [Music] Today, I’m riding from Hakodate to the city of Otaru in Hokkaido, Japan. My unusual route winds through a steep and remote snowy wilderness on the Oshima Peninsula. The train line, scheduled to be discontinued

In 2030, offers breathtaking views of the sea– “Wow” impossibly snowy mountain landscapes, rugged rural train stations— “Man, this wind is no joke!” …and a series of colorful hidden communities. All this from a diesel train— “Oh my, look at this awesome train!” …huffing and puffing through some of Japan’s most challenging terrain. [Music ends]

Okay, so if you want to go from Hok– uh, Hakodate to Otaru, every online route finder that I tried all said go up through… uh, Sapporo. Always go to Sapporo and then go over. It’s just much easier, much faster. There are more trains… Uhh… I have to find my car…

So what I want to do is go to Oshamambe and then, instead of going on the Muroran train, uh, line over to Sapporo, I want to take this… uh, stay on the Hakodate Main Line… I want to get a window seat on the right side

If I can. I think we can go here. [Train announcements] Alright, I was kind of discombobulated out on the platform. I don’t think I was explaining that well. Here’s what’s happening today: [Music] There’s a long JR line called the Hakodate Main Line, shown here in yellow. It technically runs between Hakodate and Asahikawa,

But no single train goes the entire way. In fact, no single train even goes as far as Otaru. For that journey, you’d normally take the Hokuto Limited Express train that I’m on. It goes to Oshamambe, continues along the Muroran Main Line, and then the Chitose Line, and then briefly rejoins the Hakodate Main

Line and ends at Sapporo. To passengers, this would just be one long, unbroken train ride. At Sapporo, you’d change to another train for the shorter ride to Otaru. What I’m doing is staying on the Hakodate Main Line the entire way to Otaru. That involves stepping off the Limited Express

Train and changing to a local train at Oshamambe, riding it to its endpoint, Kutchan, and then getting a third train to Otaru. The section after Oshamambe is much more rural and mountainous and obscure, and trains run far less frequently here. Miss a connection and you’re stuck for hours or even overnight.

This 140 km (87 mi) section will be discontinued in 2030 when the Hokkaido Shinkansen gets extended to Sapporo. A new bus service will serve areas along the discontinued line, but the remarkable scenery in the dense remote forests away from roads

Will be inaccessible for most travelers. So, I want to see it while I still can, in its most dramatic time of year. [Music ends] This train line often gets shut down for snow and things like that.

Today it seems okay according to the JR website, so I guess it’s going to be okay today. This is going to be a train line that someday we will lament its passing. And I do apologize for all of the video taken out of this window because it is not very clean.

This train, by the way, is called Hokuto. It’s one of the named Limited Express trains that are here in Hokkaido. This one seems pretty full, and they actually made an announcement that we’re expecting a lot of people, so get snug. But no one’s sitting next to me so far.

[Train announcements] We are stopped at this station, Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto, because the shinkansen that normally comes here to catch this train to go to Sapporo, those people are late because the shinkansen had to wait because of heavy snow and wind down in Honshu, just a little bit south of the big Seikan Tunnel.

So we’re waiting here. I think this is them. I think the people walking on now are from the Shinkansen. So, presumably, soon we’ll be leaving. But already the Hokkaido February train adventure lives up to its reputation. A lot of delays, cancellations, wind and snow

Trouble. If I wait here too long, I miss the connection and then who knows how I get to Otaru. I don’t know. Well, that was cool. I had no idea this train line went this close to the coast. That was a bonus. Big angry winter sea crashing against the land, and snowy mountains across this little bay here. Wow.

When we were in the rural parts of the climb a little while ago, I got a look at the train tracks and like, it’s just two little… the tops of the two rails. Everything else is snow. Everything else is buried. It’s just like, the cross ties are buried in snow, everything’s flat white.

Just two little rails about one inch above the snow. And I guess they know what they’re doing, but it doesn’t seem super safe. But I guess it is. Another inch of snow and it would be covered, and I guess it would still be okay.

But what do I know? Just sit back and enjoy it. You know, about 150 years ago, something like that, my people came from northern Europe to America. And you would think that being descended from that, I would be able to not mind the glare of the snow.

Because I come from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs glow. And yet, even this glare here, which is not even total, there’s still some asphalt and grass and stuff, ooh! It’s making my eyes squinch up. Look at these buildings, look at the colors

On these buildings. Wow. May not seem like much to you, but man, it’s so different than Osaka. Okay, that is one-third of the trip today done. I’m in Oshamambe. We arrived just a few minutes late, but it’s all right. It is very windy, that’s the thing I noticed.

I hope my microphone is okay, it’s kind of hidden inside my shirt. So, very windy, extremely cold just because of the wind. It’s only, it’s like actually above freezing today, I think, right here, about 2ºC. But anyway, here’s the deal. The next train leaves in about an hour.

I have an hour here at this station. And I want to leave the station, but I’ve bought my ticket for Otaru, so you’re not really supposed to leave — you’re not *allowed* to leave the station and then come back in on the same ticket.

You know, once you leave, that’s it. So if I did that, I’d have to buy another ticket to Otaru. But I want to go out and find lunch. So, I’m going to go ask the staff, kind of maybe plead with the staff and look nice and

Friendly, if they’ll let me out and then let me come back without charging me again. Let’s go see what they say. Well, the ticket gate there was just a door, and a guy. So, he said, “Sure, you can go out.” That was really cool. Alright, so here we are in Oshamambe.

This is a little town or a city on the coast. The water, I think, is right there. I guess we can go see it. As you see, right here, Oshamambe is actually going to be part of that new Shinkansen line when they build it.

So, this station, this little humble station, is going to be a big deal. It’s going to be much, much, much bigger, much bigger infrastructure, and will be a big stop on the Tokyo to Sapporo Shinkansen. Now, can I find something to eat? Hey, is

This place open? This place says “soba”. If I could find hot soba noodles right here next to the station, that would be great. “Open 11 to 4”… oh, please be open. Still waiting. Time’s running out. Okay, got seated and I ordered the “mori soba”, which is just a pile of soba.

Let’s see, guess I pour that in there, put the wasabi and vegetables, mix it up, dip them in. Pretty much the same as everywhere, but quite tasty. Okay, I think soon as I walked in, the lunch rush had just hit, and everybody was just sitting there not eating.

So they were waiting for their food. So it’s like, “Oh man, so they have to wait for their food to get fixed and then eat, and then I have to wait for a table to open up”… But it all worked in the end and I got my soba.

I ordered something called mori soba. And the whole point of me going into a restaurant like that was I wanted some warm food. It turned out it was cold soba. I always forget that cold soba exists, because I never really eat it.

It’s fine, it’s good, tastes good, but… And then I went into the bathroom afterwards to use the bathroom, and I washed my hands, and they had soap, which a lot of bathrooms don’t in Japan, but the water was only cold water.

So, all in all, the trip to that restaurant did not exactly make me warm. But they gave me some good food and we got time to spare. So, we actually have about 15 minutes left, so I’m going to walk around a little bit more,

A few streets here of Oshamambe and see what we can find. Man, this wind is no joke. It’s cold. I mean, look at this, need I say more? Alright, well, I hope you enjoyed that two-minute walk around Oshamambe, Hokkaido’s 90th biggest city or town, population 5,700.

It’s nice in the sunshine, it’s cold in the wind, and I’m going to go ahead and get into the station because the next train is a little local train, a little rural train. I’m not sure if it’s um, bench seats or actual individual seats. I think probably bench seats, but maybe not.

And anyway, if it’s uh individual seats, I want to get in and uh… get… the seat that I want, the window seat that I want. Ooh, the cold wind is making me hem and haw and babble even more than normal! Here we are. Oh my, look at this awesome train. [Train announcements]

Should have got here a little earlier, I could have gotten a window seat. As it is, they have bench seats and individual seats, and I’m on a bench seat. Maybe people will get off because it’s a little local train, and I’ll get a good seat later.

But for now, look what I got at the machine. Where is it? Here it is. A can of hot tea to warm my body and to warm my hands. So, how this works is: we’ll be on this train for about an hour and a half.

And all of these stations around here, pretty much all of them, are from like the year 1902, 1905, right around there. And they’re all going to be discontinued. Some of them are quite amazing. They’re all going to be disused, almost disused

Now, very few people getting on or off at these stations on this train. But a lot of tourists. I don’t know quite where they’re going. Maybe they’re going skiing or something around here. But it’s a pretty gorgeous place right here, just big soft snow everywhere, and the trees

Coming out. It looks like a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. Okay, we just left Niseko Station, and I think that’s a big kind of resort area for skiers. And a lot of people on the train actually got off, but then a lot more got on, and the long and short of it is, I’m still standing. But that’s okay because cool things happening

On both sides of the train, and I want to be able to get them. Like this, look at this river. That keeps happening. But what I wanted to tell you is that, 3,000 years ago, as the isthmus of Hakodate was

Forming, specifically in the year 1050 BC, there was a mountain near here called Mount Yotei, and it erupted. And that was its last eruption, but it is still an active volcano. And hopefully, we’ll be able to see it out here, out the right behind me, in just a little bit.

So, I’m going to have to wander over here and maybe push some people out of the way and see if we can see Mount Yotei. It’s a very, very large mountain. It should be exquisite — if we can see it. Well, here we are at Kutchan Station.

We arrived right on time. This is the last place I have to change the train. You can *kind of* see Mount Yotei. We kind of got a glimpse of it, but most of it is covered in fog.

I don’t know how big it goes up, actually. Right here, it’s quite snowy — not snowing, but look at the ground here. We were actually at the last station, we pulled in and they announced in English, “Attention to everybody who’s getting off here: there’s

No services after this today. There’s no bus, there’s no train, there’s no nothing. There’s no taxi. Don’t get off here, get off at the next station.” They actually told everybody don’t get off here. I guess they mean, they implied, “unless you know what you’re doing and you have someplace to go.”

But they didn’t say that; they just said don’t get off here. Anyway, we’re here now and the next train is going to be here on Platform 1 in about 15 minutes. Kutchan Station, by the way, is also going to be the other Shinkansen station in 2030, six years from now.

And I did see them, I saw all the construction stuff about, I don’t know, half a kilometer back that way on the other side. So, it’s also, this area is going to be a huge, huge stop for the Shinkansen. But now it’s just a little thing where you

Change trains. I don’t know what else there is to do here. I do see a ski run, whatever you call it, slope up there, so maybe that’s what people are doing here. [Train beeping] Okay, we left Kutchan on time. I got facts about Kutchan. Kutchan is the 45th biggest town in Hokkaido.

It is the capital of its subprefecture. I didn’t mention that, but Hokkaido is a single prefecture in Japan, but it’s also divided into subprefectures. It’s got about 15,000 people in it, and it *is* famous for skiing because its sister city is Vail, Colorado. Now, as for this trip, the rest of this, it’s

About a little over an hour, maybe almost an hour and a half. The next part is going to be kind of probably mostly the same. We will soon be in Otaru. I’m going to sit here and just gawk and enjoy and drool at it. Mouth agape.

Oh, and about this train, it’s two cars, it’s the same as the other train that I just got off of, but it’s two cars put together this time. And I got a seat, I’m facing forward in my own individual seat. Life was perfect. Now it’s doubly so.

OK, we left Kutchan 20 minutes ago, and I forgot to tell you my favorite fact about it. It has a mascot. The town has a mascot. Its name is Jagata-kun, or something like that. It’s a skiing potato. [Train announcements] OK, here we are in Otaru. What a great ride, what a fantastic ride. It’s so crazy to think that all of that, everything since Oshamambe, is going away in six years. All of that scenery is going away.

It’s going to be replaced by a Shinkansen that only stops in a couple places and is 76% in tunnels. No one’s going to see any of that anymore, unless you go by a bus. But it’s going to be buses on roads; you won’t

See those places in the forest anymore. But at least I did. So, great train. We’re here in noisy, crazy Otaru. [Loud siren] So, I am going to find my hotel here, it’s down one of these streets, and we’ll spend a little time exploring Otaru.

This is my first time here. So, that’ll be the next video, exploring Otaru, and then more trains. So, thanks for coming with me on this ride and I will see you next time. Many thanks to my Patreon supporters who help

Make these videos possible and who, for as little as $1 a month, can watch new videos at least a week before they’re published. Special thanks to David Rychly, Jacob Fatz, Lever Wang, Michael Fedor, Nathaniel Holland, Omayr, Ray Nichols, Samantha, and Will Phillips.

Also, thanks to subscribers to my free weekly email newsletter, which features links to new videos a day before they’re published, as well as behind-the-scenes info from my travels. Links to both are in the video description. And thanks for wandering around with me.