Hokkaido, an easy few days

I'd give the first day to Sapporo, and to the small surprise of it: this is a young, deliberately laid-out city, built from almost nothing in the Meiji frontier years, so unlike Kyoto or Nara it reads like a grid with a green spine down the middle. That spine is Odori Park, cut through the city in 1871 as a firebreak and now thirteen blocks of lawn and fountains (and, in February, the snow sculptures). I'd walk it end to end, take in the red-brick old government office and the clock tower nearby, and let the evening be about food — because Sapporo's warmth is, very literally, its kitchens. There's nothing here you're obliged to tick off; the pleasure is in how walkable and unhurried the centre is after the bigger cities down south.

Today I'd take the short hop northwest to Otaru, a port town on the sea that's prettier and quieter than its size suggests — and whose loveliest thing is also a small lesson in what Japan treasures. A century ago Otaru was the busiest commercial port in northern Japan, and its stone canal was the working artery of it. When trade moved on, the canal fell idle, and in 1966 the city proposed filling it in for a road. The townspeople campaigned to save it; the compromise reached in the 1980s kept much of the water and lined the walk with restored gas lamps. So the canal you stroll today is there because a town decided memory was worth more than a thoroughfare — which is a very Hokkaido kind of pride. I'd wander the warehouses, the glass workshops and the merchant street, then head back to Sapporo for the night.

This is the day that changes entirely with the calendar, and it's why I keep saying Hokkaido is really two trips. In summer, the northeast calls: the lavender and patchwork hills around Furano and Biei, an hour and a half or so out toward Asahikawa, at their purple peak in July. In winter, you'd stay closer and lean into the cold — the Sapporo Snow Festival fills Odori with carved-ice palaces in early February, and Niseko, southwest of the city, has the powder snow that draws skiers from everywhere. In the shoulder seasons you'd simply give the day to something gentler — Asahiyama Zoo, more of Otaru, an onsen afternoon. None of this is the 'right' version; it's whichever one the season hands you, and I'd plan the trip around the one you came for.

Now the trip turns south and downhill toward Hakodate, and the kind way to do that is to break the journey with a night in a hot spring — which is exactly what the geography offers. The limited express south from Sapporo passes through a belt of live volcanoes, and two of Japan's great onsen towns sit right on the line. Noboribetsu is built directly below its Jigokudani — 'Hell Valley,' a raw, steaming crater of vents and sulphur that isn't frightening at all once you understand it: more than ten thousand tons of hot water a day flow out of that valley and straight into the town's baths, so the 'hell' is really the plumbing of all that comfort. A little further sits Lake Toya, a serene caldera lake ringed by onsen, with an active volcano on its shore and fireworks over the water most nights of the warm season. I'd pick one, arrive in the afternoon, and let a long soak undo the travel day.

The trip ends at Hakodate, the old port at Hokkaido's southern tip, and this is the one stop with a full WMJS guide — so I'll keep it brief here and send you there for the depth. Hakodate was one of the first harbours Japan opened to the world in the 1850s, and that history is written all over it: a hillside in Motomachi where churches of several faiths stand side by side, a brick-warehouse bayfront, a star-shaped Western fort at Goryokaku, an early-morning seafood market by the station, and the night view from Mt Hakodate that the land itself shapes into an hourglass of light. From here the trip doesn't have to stop — the Shinkansen now runs south under the sea, so Hakodate is also the hinge onto the rest of Japan.