Stops between aomori and nagano with toddler

Hi all,

We're planning a trip in Feb 2025 for 4 weeks (yes, I know it seems early but we want to catch the Sapporo snow festival and some good early bird deals elsewhere). We (30s couple - 4th time in japan) will be travelling with our then 2 year old son and my parents in their mid 60s. We're trying to strike a balance between places we've been and want to show my first-timer parents and places that are new to us.


Aomori is somewhere that keeps coming up as somewhere I'd like to go every time I plan a trip so we would like to do sapporo and then travel down to aomori and stay a few nights there in a ryokan. My mother's only request is to see the snow monkeys at jogokudani.


So, with our 2 year old in mind, I'm a bit stumped as to how to get from aomori to nagano in a reasonable way. Trains with some stops along the way for a few nights or just fly down?


We have not done much northern Japan travel so are fairly open to anything, so long as is accessible to our toddler and two moderately fit 60 year olds.


Thank you for any and all help!

From Aomori (Shin Aomori Station) you can catch a Shinkansen to Omiya Station (about 3 hr trip), then transfer to another Shinkansen and go to Nagano Station (1 hr). There are few ways from Nagano Station to Jigokudani park, but the easiest is to catch a bus. To Nagano, it's a 4 hour comfortable ride. If that seems too long, you can take a side trip to places like Nikko or Aizu-wakamatsu.

You do realize that Aomori is one of the snowiest places in the world. Are you sure that what you want to see there is enjoyable in the snow?

I like Aomori a lot and often do two night stays there. But, for a location between Aomori and Nagano I also often stop at Sendai. Makes the onward trip to Nagano a bit shorter.
A slightly more complicated option would be to stay in Nikko/Kingugawa Onsen.

There isn't much going on in the middle of winter for 2yo and 60yo can do.

It's a weird plan considering the ages of the travellers involved.

Cannot see any location that is suitable considering their ages.

There isn't much going on in the middle of winter for 2yo and 60yo can do.
???? What?
A 2yo isn't going to be going much, but as for an adult? I do not understand why you think an adult would not enjoy travelling in winter. 60yo - maybe they will go skiing.
There is certainly a ton of stuff to do.

Wow, I'll be honest, the comments so far are rather disparaging. Thank you for your input, however Aomori is semi-locked in to our plans - we are planning on visiting aomoriya and figure it will be a good place to chill out after the hectic nature of the snow festival. My parents are (even though they are in their 60s), as mentioned, moderately fit; walking daily, road cycling and hiking on weekends. This will be their first visit to an Asian country. We travel to snow bound regions every 3 years (Germany, new Zealand, South Tyrol etc) specifically because we do not have snow in our country and it's honestly a bit of a novelty for us. Hubby and I have done Sapporo and Otaru before and want to see a bit of Tohoku if we can.

So far our itinerary is compromised of 4N Sapporo, 2N aomori, 3N nagano, 6N kyoto, 3N hiroshima/miyajima, 7N tokyo. We are planning on travelling very slowly thanks to our then 2 year old.

We have 4 additional nights to allocate. Hubby and I have also previously been to Nikko, Hakone, Kanazawa, Takayama, Matsumoto, Hiroshima/Miyajima, Koyasan, Osaka . We loved Nikko so it may be worth our while to stop in there - thanks Japancustomtours!

Any other ideas would be fantastic and much appreciated

Trading it now as full itinerary it makes more sense.

You could make it over to Hagi from Hiroshima area or you could spend some relax time in Izu peninsula (eg onsen in Shuzenji). Specially if you can consider renting a car Izu peninsula is great.

Or you could add some stops along the way to Hiroshima. Eg Naoshima, Tejima, Inujima. Or Takamatsu.

You could even look into traveling back to Tokyo (right you are leaving from there? ) by ferry through the Sento inland sea.