Getting our rental car 🚗 Exploring Japan’s Rest Stops & Scenic Drive to Furano | HOKKAIDO VLOG 07
Finally, we reach. Oh my god, there’s a story. Later, I’ll tell you guys what’s the story. So, what happened was I booked our rental car through the pickup was listed as the Sappuro clock tower branch. So, naturally, I thought it would be right next to the clock tower, but no. We ended up at the wrong location. There was no Times car rental counter inside. After asking around and showing the address, we finally learned the branch was actually inside the Sappuro Sosi Square building right next to the Hokkaido television broadcasting building. Thankfully, we still made it there just in time. Picking up our rental car with Times car rental turned out to be pretty smooth. All we had to do was hand over our passport and our IC, original and international driving licenses, plus the printed cloak voucher, and we were good to go. For this booking, I chose to pay at pickup. The original price was 20,200 yen, but since I decided to extend our return time from 1:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., the total jump to 30,630. So, so on Cl. I also added the etc device and an additional driver for my husband. As for the Hokkaido Expressway pass, I couldn’t add it during the booking, so I got it directly at the counter instead. Now, a quick breakdown. The etc car is what lets you breeze through expressway toll gates without needing to stop and pay cash. The Hokkaido Expressway Pass, on the other hand, is like an all you can drive pass. You pay a flat fee for a set number of days and enjoy unlimited toll use across Hokkaido, but it still requires the ETC card to work. So basically, ETC card alone means you pay as you go, while the expressway pass gives you unlimited driving for a fixed price. Perfect if you’re covering a lot of ground. The stuff also gave me a folder filled with useful infos. I’ll be sharing more about that later on in this video. Oh my god, I’m so nervous. I’m so nervous. Get out. Oh my god. Very long. How to suck water? Okay. Oh, break push. Break push. No. GPS English language. Okay. Okay. Okay. Don’t touch. Okay. Okay. Oh my god. Oh my goodness. Sorry guys. I’m just really nervous but excited at the same time. That one is brake. This one is acceleration. It’s auto. Oh, what is this? Don’t know. Oh sh. So that’s the GPS already set to English. The start button, the parking is this one. Actually, this is the first time that I drive. Um I mean the type of car is like like this, you know, like the start and stop engine is through a button instead of a key because I drive my V, the old school my V. What else? What’s this? Cannot open. Oh, it’s pull. Oh, okay. There’s some charging port over here. So this will be my view. Oh my gosh. Let me pray first before I drive. Okay. Yeah, exactly. foreign. It’s a monkey for more than 5 hours. Hi guys. Let me cool down for a bit. I think you can can tell that I’m super nervous. But I want to record this moment so that in future when I look back, right, I can like be so proud of myself, brave up myself to drive at a foreign country. Sorry, I’m stuttering. Anyways, my focus now is to reach the destination safely, which is um our home stay at Furano. Throughout this whole journey, I have already did my research, find the rest stop so that if there’s anything if I’m too nervous, I need to calm down or I need to like go toilet break, I know where to stop. So, I did my homework at Google and then I record down. I think I will put it at the description below in case if you guys need some help if you’re going towards Fano. But I’m not sure when this video is going to come out anyways, but in future future maybe if you need help, you can look back at my this video. I try to use ways here at Hokkaido. It it does tell you you have to go straight for another like how many kilometers before turning but then it won’t tell you which road name cuz it’s in Japanese. It’s better that if if you have a co-pilot so that the person can look at the map and then tell you okay which turning oncoming road or the next road. The car also have the GPS, but I’m not sure why the GPS is like it tracks like a bit far and also the destination arrival time is like longer. So, we open both ways and also the car’s GPS, but we we rely more on ways because I’m already used to we already used to using ways in Malaysia, the interface, everything. Let me show you guys outside. What I did is I did not set the destination at the homeay first. I set it at each every stop so that I know around what time we will reach this first stop. Then while we’re stopping here then I check how much longer until we reach the home stay so that I roughly know how much time should I spend at the rest stop. This is the first stop which is the Naporo um parking spot uh towards Asahi Kawa if I’m not wrong because our priority now is we have to reach at a home stay before 7:00 p.m. I book it through Agoda and then the information says that check-in time is only 3:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. What if I reach later than 7:00 p.m. then how? So I messaged the host uh in Japanese although is in a broken Japanese with some help from the Google translator and then the host said that not possible because his working time is only until 7:00 p.m. and he’s the only manager there. So after 7 he will left the property. So basically that home stay throughout the night he won’t be there. If there’s any problems or inquiries he won’t be there. That’s the the cons of it. My estimation is to reach the homestead at about 5:30, 5:30 to 6:00 p.m. So there’s like another hour of buffering just in case we drive too slow or we use the wrong road towards the place. No matter what planning it is, it is better to have some buffering time because you will never know if anything unexpected happened. That is what my life experience taught me throughout all my travel plannings from Sapuro city to Fur is actually like only two hours but I allocate 4 hours because I know I’m going to stop at every each rest stop. So each rest stop will like you know we will stop for like 15 minutes for toilet break or buy something at the commini all these little little times uh once it accumulate it will like drag on our journey. This is just to like give me some cushion you know so that I won’t feel so rush and nervous that I have to reach at the home stay before 7 and also um at Japan Hokkaido he’s my hobby is calling um his mom just to tell them where are we now at Japan’s highway in Malaysia we call it as highway in Japan they call it as expressway the speed limit is only like 80 kilometer per hour to 100 km per hour so we cannot like speed up, you know, like Malaysia, I know Malaysian, I know you guys speed up until like 120, 140, but usually if I drive back to my my hab’s hometown and usually we drive around 100 to 110, so it’s still okay for us. To us, it’s normal basically. But at like small roads, small town, the speed limit is 30 to 60 kilometer per hours. from the city area until the highway the express rate there is like signs there saying 50 so 50 is the max but slowly slowly when you drive how come I I pass like over the limit a bit oh okay I need to slow down you don’t feel that it’s fast it to me it’s kind of slow like in Malaysia it’s kind of like 30 kilometer per hour slow you know but then at the sensor here is already 50 in my I’m wondering like are we going to get there on time. But then it’s like, okay, I’m going to trust ways and Google kind estimation. The sunset I’ve checked that is around 6:45 p.m. Again, I have did my homework. I use Google Earth to check the road to see if like there’s any um road lampuan, you know. Sorry, I’m a bit cluttered. So, I just use whatever words in my mind to make sure that if we’re driving after sunset, whether is it safe or not, certain parts of the highway doesn’t have street lamp. Okay, street lamp. I found the word street lamp or street light. But I want to be more safe. So I try to reach there before sunset. Yeah, I guess that’s it. That’s the information I want to info dump so that I’m not so nervous. This is the Seiko Mart at our first rest stop. There’s a smoking area, the smoking area. And then the toilet is over there. And this is the stop. One cool thing about this car, I’m not sure if you guys can see. I don’t think the screen records it around this part, there’s a like projection of what’s the speed I’m driving and also the direction because of the car’s GPS. It will have like a arrow like 6.2 kilometer I have to turn left. It’s a little bit distracting though because I have to like watch out for the traffic light. At the same time, I have to like look at the speed limit so that I didn’t over the speed limit. So yeah, we’re going to move on to the second rest stop. Just hopefully pray that we safely reach our homeay before sunset and before the check in time ends. Yeah. Right. I want to go pee now. We have reached the second stop at Iwami Zawa. a rest stop. This is the main icon here at this stop. And also there’s this shop. Uh shop. Yeah, I think shop call shop. Sorry. Okay. Summer. Yes. Okay. Heat. Heat. She look like me. Now I’m co-pilot. My driving. I don’t think you’re videographer/cilot. Maybe you’re so much. Yeah. Hello. First time going in the tunnel in a short tunnel already. Shot tunnel. foreign. Yeah. This building is actually a station for the snowflow. So next to it there’s a washroom, right? Public toilet. You can see that. You guys, I am so happy to show you this milliondoll view. This is at the lake Katawa Katugawa. Sorry. So brace yourself. Whoa. She Yeah. So yeah. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. lose. She come The rental car company gave us this file that contains a lot of information. The road sign is on the front just in case you need to see immediately. So this one is the gas station map. So they circle circle it which is the nearest number one. This is the first gas station. The second one over here, there’s a indication of whether it’s a full service or self service. So, we’re going to the full service cuz we don’t know how to sell service. Have to pump this regular red color one. Mainly the staff will circle those things that we need to take note of. In case of accident, we have to call the police, police number, insurance or customer service number. We bought full protection which is this one. So that we are worry free when we drive the car because everything is covered. There’s also this traffic light thing because it’s slightly different from ours just slightly not very much of a difference. Those that require special attention is this one like whenever you saw this sign the mar sign means you have to fully stop and also this real road crossing especially at Fernando there’s a bunch of it. So these things we have to like specially take note. These are the road sign, common road signs. And there’s even a useful Japanese train station. This is the toll. They circle this two. If you bought the expressway passes and also the etc card is like our RFID. You just have to go through this purple color sign or mix of purple and green which is a regular one. But just remember this purple color etc will do. And you don’t have to like fully stop. Just slow down and pass through. So, it’s like our Malaysian smart tech and RFID kind of system. I should take it slow, but I can’t stay when the world is waiting. I’m too used to being on my own. Hearts will break, but I have to chase it. I’m dancing on the edge again. The wind is calling my name. I’m dancing on the edge again. This time I’m not looking back. Babe, you can change me. You can tell me down. I’ll be back in every place I fight. I’ll break the walls with rebels mine. I’m a hurricane, a free born. I remember when you told me I should settle down, but these restlessly won’t keep me grounded. The old the only place I found where I feel light and the stars will guide me. I’m dancing on the wind. You can change me. You can turn me down. I’ll be back in every place I find. I’ll break the moment where I’m a hurricane.
This episode of my Hokkaido travel vlog takes you along our road trip — from picking up the rental car to driving toward Furano! 🚗✨
We made a few fun stops along the way, exploring Japan’s unique highway rest stops (service areas). It’s always interesting to see how everyday travel moments feel so different in another country. 🌸
Just in case you’re wondering, we successfully reached the homestay at 6:40pm 😬
Locations featured in this vlog:
📍Nopporo parking Area (Eastbound)
📍Iwamizawa Service Area (Northbound) for Asahikawa
📍Mikasa 三笠市 town
📍Lake Katsurazawa Snowplow Station
📍Furano Denen Cottage Nupuri
🗾 Route: Sapporo → Furano, Hokkaido
🎥 Vlog Theme: Road trip, rest stop discoveries, cozy Japan travel vibes
📷 Filmed with DJI Osmo Pocket 3 & iPhone 14 Pro
#HokkaidoRoadTrip #JapanVlog #Furano #Hokkaido #JapanTravel #RestStopJapan #TravelVlog #HokkaidoDrive
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