Noboribetsu & Lake Toya Nature Tour with Otaru Visit from Sapporo

A comprehensive day out. Scenery, crater, bears, lake, shopping. Excellent local food along the way.

Scenic views Different experience than being in the city Nice mix of scenic adventures Timing of stops was comfortable

This was a busy day that covered south Hokkaido. Jay was organised, informative and gave clear instructions. We saw beautiful scenery and the day went smoothly. The best of the many day trips I have taken in Hokkaido. Thank you

It was great. Unexpected heavy snow fall made many issues, everything got delayed, but we miss nothing. Snow made the trip more adventurous, maybe snow added an extra value. The guide did a good job. We appreciate the hard job done by the driver of the bus, driving under heavy snow fall.

This was my first time traveling to Sapporo and wanted to explore the northern part of Japan. At first glance I thought this tour looked great. However, it was a huge disappointment. The one positive was the guide contacted us the night before to confirm our reservation and review the meeting point. The bus was jammed full almost 50 people. Mostly Chinese and our guide addressed them all in Chinese. Please don’t advertise English when it’s Chinese mostly spoken. The tour was too long. It could have been shortened and too much time at sulfer stop. The weather November 19th was extremely cold. The stop where the bears were was confusing. No one really said the bears are here and made a huge to do around the lavender. Captive audience. Our guide was more focused on promoting and upselling lavender. As if it was his own product. Obviously, the guides are incentivized to promote product. It was offensive and too much! The soup Curry was good but again a captive audience. Where else would we eat? It would have been nice to have enough time to go on the Rope (gondola) but not quite enough time. The lake was lovely but again we had extreme cold weather. The photos posted of the excursion are all from the summer. In the future during good weather encourage the guests the carry the small crampons that fit over shoes. Available at the Donkey store. One huge major red flag was the bus driver. He was going way too fast for the conditions. My partner and I were on pins and needles. The driver was reckless and on the last stop (a quaint little town) I inquired with our guide if we would be taking the same route back? If so, I was going to train back to Sapporo than to get on the terrifying bus with a reckless and chaotic driver. So many close calls and abrupt lane changes put a dark cloud on my experience. We both were frightened and relieved once the tour was over. Not a good experience and catered to Chinese tourists. Think about redesigning the tour in smaller groups, less stops, and stop the false advertising for English speaking. Final comment, the audio speaker was horrible too.

Great tour! It was trilingual (Japanese, English, and Chinese), with the tour guide expertly handling a running commentary on what we were seeing and handling questions in all three languages. There is quite a bit of driving as the sites are spread out, with the longest stretch being about two hours. There are plenty of opportunities to buy souvenirs of all types at pretty much every stop. There are also restroom facilities at every stop.

This was a really good overview of the area. I knew Hokkaido was massive but really didn’t have a sense of it until this trip. We saw so much over the course of the day but belatedly scratched the surface of what the area has to offer. It gave me the desire to come back an explore more! I would definitely recommend as a great day out.

From the interesting walk through a volcanic field to spectacular views of s blue lake to a pleasant walk through a quaint town--all tied up in a neat bow of practical information from an experienced guide. That's what I liked about this tour!

The tour was cancelled 5 hours prior to the departure, I’ve got a message at 3 am. While I understand the meaning of unforeseen circumstances I’d still appreciate at least 24 hours of notice, especially when I’m on holiday and everything is planned to a schedule

So this is just for fair warning I thought the reviews about the bus being small was exaggerated but they were in fact very small. There are a few seats that have no leg room at all. I was forced to sit in the fetal position. Other than that the tour was very nice. We got to see alot of beautiful sites. Our tour guide was very nice.