Hokkaido's capital — where the world's most famous snow festival draws 2 million visitors to six days of ice sculpture, the island's signature miso ramen style was invented here, and ski resorts are a 40-minute train ride from the city centre
Sapporo (1.97 million), the capital of Hokkaido (Japan's northernmost main island), is the fifth-largest city in Japan and one of the youngest — it was planned and built from scratch in the 1870s as a grid city on a North American model by the Meiji government's Hokkaido Development Commission. Sapporo miso ramen (one of Japan's three canonical ramen styles alongside tonkotsu and shoyu) was created here in the 1960s; the city's beer culture is equally distinctive — the Sapporo Brewery (1876, oldest in Japan) produces the flagship lager that bears the city's name. The Sapporo Snow Festival (Yu…
Hokkaido (historically known as Ezo) was inhabited for millennia by the Ainu people — Hokkaido's indigenous people whose language, culture, and animist spiritual practices remain distinct from mainland Japanese traditions. The Meiji government began formal colonisation of Hokkaido in 1869, establishing Sapporo as the administrative capital and importing American agricultural consultants (most notably William S. Clark, who founded Sapporo Agricultural College — now Hokkaido University — in 1876) to develop the island's resources. Sapporo hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics, the first Winter Games…