The Sapporo Okurayama Ski Jump was used as the Large Hill event stage in the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics. There had been a ski jump here since 1931, when a smaller facility was built with help from Crown Prince Yasuhito, the younger brother of Emperor Hirohito. For the Olympics, the ski jump was en...
About 18 kilometers east of Toyako, Hokkaido’s most celebrated onsen resort has it all. Mountain scenery, fantastic hot spring baths, and a close-up look at the geothermal forces that make the hot springs possible.
Jigoku Dani, which means Hell Valley, is a name you’ll find at several onsens thro...
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 ...
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 offi...
This was Japan’s second national park, and it’s easy to see why it received such recognition. A geological marvel, the park contains no less than 22 volcanoes, as well as three caldera or crater lakes, each of which is unique.
The most visited lake is Akan-ko. Akan-ko is famous for the fuzzy gre...
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...
Patrick and Kevin managed to visit not only Hokkaido’s best known onsen resort (at Noboribetsu), but also stayed the night at Niseko, perhaps the island’s most popular ski resort. Famous for its deep powder, excellent runs and a high quality nightlife, Niseko is drawing more and more foreign visitor...
Located within Hokkaido’s Daisetsuzan National Park, the city of Furano is about as far inland as you can get in Japan. In fact, showing the same civic pluck that drives cities across the country to forge a unique identity, Furano has dubbed itself Heso no Machi, or the Belly Button Town, a name der...
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 centr...
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...
The 65 kilometer long Shiretoko peninsula, in the northeast of Hokkaido, is one of Japan’s most pristine wildernesses. Much of the peninsula, a narrow strip of land with a string of volcanoes forming its spine, is inaccessible except by foot, creating a haven for an abundance of wildlife including a...
Like Akan ko to the north, Toya ko is a beautiful caldera lake, nearly circular and about ten kilometers across. The lake is graced with four wooded islands, accessible by boat from the hot springs resort town of Toya Ko Onsen. Both the lake and the town are located within the Shikotsu-Toya National...
It’s almost unbelievable how obsessive ramen fans can be about their favorite bowls of noodles. Up and down the length of Japan, various regional versions of ramen spawn fiercely partisan factions, and for at least thirty years Sapporo ramen has been one of the heavy hitters. But what’s the differen...
