■Sapporo
Like so many places in Hokkaido, Japan’s fifth largest city takes its name from the Ainu language. The word Sapporo is the Japanese appropriation of an Ainu place name meaning “large river running through a plain.” For many visitors, expecting a sleepy city far from the heart of things, Sapporo is a delightful surprise. One of Japan’s youngest cities, Sapporo is also one of its most accessible, particularly on foot, owing to its ample park spaces and carefully planned grids of streets. After you’ve thoroughly explored the city, the Susukino drinking district offers the largest choice of bars and restaurants north of Tokyo. Outside Japan, Sapporo is probably most closely identified with the 1972 Winter Olympics. Among Japanese, however, the city is probably better known for its incredible cold-water seafood (especially crab) and the Sapporo Snow Festival.
The Snow Festival began almost 60 years ago with a group of high-school kids building glorified snowmen in one of the city’s parks. Today, the snowmen have mutated into enormous and elaborate sculptures, built by international teams competing against one another in an event that draws thousands of people to the city despite frigid temperatures. During the festival, there are also concerts and other attractions nightly. Held each year from February 5th to the 11th, those planning to visit the Snow Festival should make reservations well ahead of time.
 The city also boasts an unusually high number of western-style buildings, in part because large numbers of foreign advisors were brought to the city during its early years to train Japanese in the most appropriate technologies for the exploitation of Hokkaido’s vast interior. One well-known result of this policy is that many of Hokkaido’s older farm buildings look as if they were just airlifted in from Iowa. In Sapporo, the most famous of these western-style buildings is the Sapporo Clock Tower, the last vestige of an early agricultural college that later developed into Hokkaido University. Instantly recognizable by almost all Japanese in photographs, the Clock Tower is an attractive building, but has also been named one of Japan’s “Three Great Disappointments” because it’s so much smaller than people expect. Never mind that. Once people have had a look at the rest of Sapporo, they’re more than willing to forgive a slightly dispiriting old clock. Come see for yourself!
■Odori Koen
In the late 1860’s, Japan’s new Meiji government decided that Hakodate was less than ideal as the capital of Hokkaido, and began looking for a more central and defensible location. Stakes were high, as the government had decided to make the colonization and development of the northern island a central priority. Fairly quickly, a site on the Ishikari Plain was chosen, and the Hokkaido Development Commission began planning the new city. Horace Capon, former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, was brought in as an advisor, and construction began. One of the first decisions was to leave a large strip of undeveloped land running east to west to serve as a firebreak. This would become Odori Koen, one of Sapporo’s most pleasant features, and a huge part of its civic life. The park is a 105-meter wide strip of green running through the heart of the city, with a wealth of trees, flowers and fountains. There are events in Odori Koen throughout the year. During the city’s famous Snow Festival, the park is one of the main centers of activity, with at least one enormous snow sculpture being built as a communal project open to anyone who wants to lend a hand. Stop by and leave your mark on this appealing city, at least until the snow melts.
■William Smith Clark
 Despite having spent a mere eight months in Japan, William Clark cast a very long shadow. A civil war hero, Massachusetts senator, and the third president of Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University of Massachusetts at Amherst), Clark was invited to serve as vice president of Sapporo Agricultural College. During his brief tenure in 1876 and 1877 he helped lay the foundations for the college which would later become Hokkaido University, taught a bible course that had an enormous influence on several key figures in Japanese Christianity, and then left for home.
On the day of his departure, Clark stood before the first class of the college and gave a farewell speech for which he is still remembered throughout the country. The speech was not preserved, and was only pieced together later from the memories of students who had been especially moved, but most educated Japanese know at least the first three words, “Boys, be ambitious!” Speaking to a nation that had just emerged from more than two centuries of seclusion, and was determined to become a world power, Clark’s words of encouragement made an impact that might have been lost just twenty or thirty years later.
>>Access
Shinchitose Airport====(36 min. by JR express train)====JR Sapporo station
Shinchitose Airport====(60 min. by bus or car)====Sapporo
>>Website
Sapporo City
■Historical Village of Hokkaido
 14 kilometers east of Sapporo’s downtown, the Historical Village of Hokkaido is one of the city’s most interesting attractions. The village preserves about 60 stone and wooden buildings from the Hokkaido’s early days, scattered across 133 acres. And these aren’t just small cabins and a few post offices, either. There are large former government buildings and two story farmhouses that have been carefully brought here and reassembled. Visitors can ride horse-drawn trolleys (or sleighs in winter!) through streets intended to recreate four archetypal communities from the Meiji and Taisho eras. A town community, fishing village, farming community and mountain settlement are all on display, each with craftsmen and interpretive guides on hand to explain what visitors are seeing and to demonstrate period crafts, music and other elements of life in these communities. Unlike many similar attractions, in which visitors are asked not to enter historical buildings, here you are invited to slip off your shoes and wander the interiors to your heart’s content, though some of the buildings are closed in winter. In addition to the buildings themselves, the village hosts a number of festivals, including an autumn harvest festival at the village’s Shinto shrine. If you’d like to get a sense of what Hokkaido was like during its frontier days, the Historical Village comes very highly recommended.
>>Access
JR Sapporo station====(50 min. by bus or car)====Sapporo Historical Village
>> Fee
Summer (April - November)
Adult: 830 yen, High school/College student: 610 yen, Junior high school student or younger: Free
Winter (December - March)
Adult: 680 yen, High school/College: 550 yen, Junior high or younger: Free
>>Open Hours & Holidays
May 1st - Sep. 30th: 9:00 - 17:00 (No holidays)
Oct. 1st - April 40th: 9:00 - 16:30 (Monday and December 29th through January 3rd.)
>>Website
Hokkaido Historical Village
■Sapporo Beer Garden and Museum
 Beer Garden or Biergarten? No one seems to be able to make up their mind, but don’t worry about it too much. The important thing is the place itself, the very epicenter of Japan’s truly massive beer culture. In 1876 Seibei Nakagawa, recently returned from studying the brewer’s art in Germany, was appointed head brewer of Japan’s first beer company, and Sapporo was born.
Today, the Japanese drink more beer per capita than any other country in Asia, and the humble brew has left sake and other traditional Japanese spirits far behind in the affections of many people here.
Housed in a beautiful old red brick factory building, the Sapporo Beer Garden and Museum is the sort of place that can bring tears to a man’s eye. Great, beery tears of joy.
The museum tour itself is more interesting than you may imagine, especially if you remember to request an English language audio guide. But the real treat comes at the end when visitors are allowed to try free samples of some of the company’s product or, for a reasonable fee, drink as much of it as they can in twenty minutes. Sound like a challenge?
Leaving the museum, the Beer Garden (or Biergarten) offers a variety of dining options, but the most popular is the famous Genghis Khan Lamb, a Hokkaido specialty. Slices of fresh lamb are mixed with vegetables and spices and barbecued in a metal hotpot that looks like a Mongol warrior’s helmet! Delicious, and all the more so when washed down with all the fresh draft beer you can drink. Don’t miss it!
>>Access
JR Sapporo Station====(8 min. by taxi or car)====Sapporo Beer Garden and Museum
>>Open Hours
Museum 9:00 - 18:00
Beer Garden 11:30 - 22:00
>>Holidays
Museum: Year-end and new year holidays
Beer Garden: December 31st
>>Website
Sapporo Beer Garden and Museum (English)
-Matt Mangham
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