Organising travel from Kagoshima

Departing from Kagoshima I will be sorry to leave this city by the sea under its brooding volcano - I have some memorable sites to take away with me and am still damp from the days hike yesterday 0_0. Still, early start to catch the Shinkansen train bound for Hakata (where I started from in Fukuoka) to link up with the train to take me to Hiroshima…
While at the station I wanted to organise my future travel to Saporro… This is in Hokkaido at the far north of the country, but I wanted to catch the snow festival there if possible - so at the station I enquired about the possibility of travelling there in one day/overnight. Well, the timetable ledgers came out, staff bustled with keen enthusiasm to find me the best trains to get me there on the day selected 11th Feb (National holiday in Japan!), and they succeeded :) I have a Shinkansen train to Tokyo and a sleeper cabin to Sapporo (Be aware that sleeper cabins cost extra and in this case an extra 9240Y/~£85 but worth it if you want to get there overnight in comfort). I also booked the Shinkansen back to Tokyo on the 13th feb so it means in effect that I have 1 day in Saporro before returning south and I hope that this will be long enough to see the snow festival and cope with the Siberian cold ;)