Sapporo to Tokyo in 7 days by train

Hello All,

Me and my wife will be visiting Sapporo snow festival 2016. We will be leaving Sapporo on Friday February 12th and fly out of Narita on Friday 19th. We are not sure where to stop along the way on our way back to Tokyo. We are interesting in Food, Scenery, Onsen and a bit or city life. We like to see Yokote Kamakura Snow Festival. Maybe some illumination event some where along the route.

Our first plan was to fly from Sapporo to Nagoya and visit Shirakawago in Feb 14th but it seems that the bus ticket is hard to come by and we do not want to break our budget getting the taxi. So, We figure We can visit Shirakawago on our next time we visit Japan unless you guys can advice me how to visit the village in this 3 months short notice!

Thank you for your help Guys

If you are having trouble booking bus tickets now for February, it's probably because reservations are not open yet.

Reservations for buses from Takayama are pretty much all open and already fully booked. One person reported elsewhere that when one company opened up reservations last night everything was reserved in minutes.

There is a one day tour from Nagoya to the light up, which still has seats available for the 14th: http://www.yokoso-japan.jp/en/64340.html

Otherwise, going back down from Tohoku is a lovely idea (we're actually going up to the snow festival via tohoku, and then flying to nagoya to go to the light up on the 14th!)
The Lake Towada winter story should still be on then, which you could visit on the way (of sorts) to Yokote: http://towadako-fuyumonogatari.com/
And the Zao snow monsters are usually illuminated during feb. You can cover the onsen part of your trip there too!

Thank you for the link. Very helpful, How is Hakodate?

If you want some interesting scenery, you could do Sapporo to Aomori and then the resort train to Akita and then either shinkansen back to Tokyo via Sendai or continue to Niigata (they have lots of snow) and get the shinkansen from there.