Sapporo
City · Mountains · Relaxed
Hokkaido's capital is a city of wide, grid-straight streets, cold beer and hearty food. Warm up with a bowl of miso ramen, gather round a grill of sizzling lamb, and try crab from the northern seas. Winter is the big season: the Snow Festival fills Odori Park with towering sculptures of ice and snow, best seen at night when they're lit up. The ski slopes are within the hour, including Sapporo Teine, where the 1972 Winter Olympics were held, so you can ski all day and still be back in the city for dinner. When the cold bites, an underground network of walkways keeps the city easy to explore. Summer is mild and green, a welcome break from the heat further south, with flower festivals and beer gardens in the open air. Three days, more if you're heading into the mountains.
A weekend here might look like
- Morning: Odori Park - A green ribbon running through the middle of Sapporo, about a dozen blocks long, with the TV Tower at its eastern end and fountains, lawns and flower beds in between. It's the city's front room: the Lilac Festival in spring, a beer garden with grilled corn under the tower in summer, autumn colour, and the White Illumination from late November. In early February it becomes the main stage for the Snow Festival, with huge sculptures lining the blocks. Outside those, it's simply a pleasant walk across town. The rose garden at West 12 is worth the stroll in late June.
- Lunch: Ganso Ramen Yokocho Sapporo - A hundred metres of ramen shops packed shoulder to shoulder in an alley off Susukino, and the original of Sapporo's two ramen yokocho. Around 17 small, steamy, hole-in-the-wall counters, no chains, each with its own take on the miso ramen the city is famous for, plus shoyu and shio if you want them. The thick, curly Hokkaido noodles hold up in the broth, and corn and butter are the local finish. Wander the length of it, read the menu displays, then pick one and squeeze in. A five-minute walk from Susukino station, best at night under the neon, and expect to queue at peak times.
- Afternoon: Sapporo Beer Museum - Japan's only beer museum, in a handsome red-brick former sugar refinery that's been part of Sapporo since 1876. The exhibits walk you through the founding of Japan's oldest beer brand and its tangle with the country's history, including the years when beer was rationed in place of rice. It's compact, so allow 20 to 30 minutes for the self-guided route, or book the 55-minute Premium Tour with a guide. Either way the finish is the tasting bar, where a paid flight includes the Kaitakushi beer brewed to the original recipe and sold nowhere else. Soft drinks and corn tea for non-drinkers. Next door, the Bier Garten does all-you-can-eat Genghis Khan lamb with unlimited beer.
More to explore
- Mount Moiwa Ropeway Entrance - Sapporo's classic view, from 531 metres up. A ropeway carries you most of the way, then you change to the little Morris car cable train for the final climb to the summit. The observation deck gives an unbroken 360-degree panorama over the city and the Ishikari Plain, out to the mountains and, on a clear day, the sea beyond Otaru. It's the night view people come for, officially one of Japan's new top three, and the best plan is to arrive about an hour before sunset and watch the lights come on. There's a cafe and a small planetarium at the top. Dress warm, it's windy up there.
- Shiroi Koibito Park - A chocolate factory dressed up as a fairytale village, on Sapporo's western edge. The Ishiya company makes Shiroi Koibito, Hokkaido's famous white-chocolate langue de chat biscuits, here, and built a mock-European streetscape of clock towers, rose gardens and a London double-decker bus around it. The grounds, gardens and shop are free to wander, a ticket gets you the production line and the exhibition halls. There's a biscuit-decorating workshop, a small train, candy-making demonstrations, a cafe, and soft serve worth queuing for. Weather-proof and reliably good with kids, in snow or in flowers. Allow one and a half to two hours.
- Hokkaido Jingu - Hokkaido's principal Shinto shrine, founded in 1869 as the island was being settled and set in woodland at the edge of Maruyama Park. The approach is the pleasure: a long stone path through tall trees, quiet even when Sapporo isn't. Four kami are enshrined here, including the spirit of Emperor Meiji, and the main hall's gold leaf and imperial chrysanthemum crest catch the light. Draw an omikuji fortune in English, and if it's a bad one, tie it up on the grounds to turn your luck. Around 1,500 cherry trees bloom in May, later than the rest of Japan, and the snow-covered walk in is lovely in winter. Ten to fifteen minutes from Maruyama-koen station, and it pairs naturally with the park and Maruyama Zoo.
- Rokkatei Sapporo Main Store - Hokkaido's most famous confectioner, in its own building a few minutes west of Sapporo Station. The Marusei Butter Sandwich is the one everyone comes for, introduced in 1977: rum-soaked raisins and Hokkaido butter cream with white chocolate between two soft, crumbling biscuits, in retro packaging that's half the charm. The ground-floor shop carries the full range, including items you won't find at the airport, and the café upstairs serves the Marusei Ice Sand, a store-exclusive version made with ice cream, plus cakes, coffee and even seasonal pizza.
- Morihico Coffee - A 70-year-old wooden house down a back alley in Maruyama, ivy over the walls, a red tin roof, and a cafe inside since 1996. This is the original Morihico, the shop the whole Sapporo chain grew from, and it still feels like stepping into a picture book: antique furniture, a vintage clock, low ceilings, and an attic room upstairs with a window onto the seasons. Beans are roasted in-house over a direct flame and hand-brewed through flannel. Ask for Mori no Shizuku, the Forest Drops blend served only here. Tiny and much loved, so put your name on the list and wait. A four-minute walk from Maruyama Koen station, and an easy pairing with the shrine and the park.
- TOKUMITSU COFFEE Cafe & Beans 大通店(トクミツコーヒー) - A serious coffee house on the second floor of Odori Bisse, with full glass walls looking out over Odori Park. The owner selects and roasts the beans himself, and the menu runs to nine blends plus seasonal and single-origin options, brewed as pour-over, alongside the house Sapporo blend. Homemade cakes and light meals to go with it, with the cheesecake and the coffee jelly parfait the ones regulars order. High ceilings, plenty of light and a quiet room, which makes it a good place to rest your feet mid-sightseeing. In winter you can watch the Odori illuminations from your table.