Susukino entertainment district, Sapporo, at night

10 Best Things to Do in Sapporo

A quick, friendly rundown of Sapporo's biggest highlights — from the Snow Festival's giant sculptures to a bowl of the city's own miso ramen — a good starting point for a first visit.

Short on time in Sapporo? Here are ten places and experiences first-time visitors and repeat travelers both keep coming back to — a quick list to work from if you’d rather not plan every hour of your trip.

1
Odori Park & Sapporo TV Tower
Odori Park cuts a roughly 1.5-kilometer green corridor straight through downtown Sapporo, laid out in 1871 as a firebreak and now the stage for almost every major event the city holds, from the Snow Festival to summer's beer garden. At its eastern end stands the Sapporo TV Tower, built in 1957, with an observation deck 90 meters up that lines up the full length of the park below. It's as much a daily thoroughfare for locals as a tourist stop, so there's rarely a bad time to walk through.
TV Tower observation deck: 9:00 AM – 9:50 PMOdori Nishi 1-chome, Chuo-ku, Sapporo
Sapporo
2
Sapporo Snow Festival
Held every February, the Sapporo Snow Festival began in 1950 when local high school students built six snow sculptures in Odori Park — a small, spontaneous event that's since grown into one of Japan's biggest winter festivals, drawing over two million visitors in a typical year. The festival spans three sites: Odori Park's massive sculptures, some over 10 meters tall; Susukino's finely detailed ice sculptures and ice bars; and the family-friendly Tsudome site. It runs for about a week and draws crowds accordingly, so book accommodation well ahead if your trip lines up with it.
3
Sapporo Beer Museum
Japan's only beer museum sits inside a red-brick building put up in 1890, originally a sugar factory before Sapporo Breweries took it over; the museum itself opened in 1987, tracing the Sapporo brand back to a government-run brewery from 1876, Japan's oldest beer label. A free self-guided tour covers that history floor by floor, while a paid tasting course lets you sample beers not sold elsewhere. It's an easy pairing with the adjoining beer garden for a proper lunch.
11:00 AM – 6:00 PM (closed Mondays)Kita 7-jo Higashi 9-chome 1-1, Higashi-ku, Sapporo
4
Mount Moiwa's night view
At 531 meters, Mount Moiwa rises just southwest of central Sapporo, and its night view was named one of Japan's 'New Three Great Night Views' in 2015 — a ropeway and a short cable car get you to the summit observation deck, where the whole grid of the city spreads out toward Ishikari Bay. It's a straightforward half-day trip from downtown, and worth timing for dusk so you catch the transition from daylight to full night.
Ropeway: 11:00 AM – 10:00 PM5-3-7 Fushimi, Chuo-ku, Sapporo
5
Susukino
Susukino is the largest entertainment district north of Tokyo, tracing its roots back to 1871, and today it's a dense grid of bars, restaurants, karaoke boxes, and a dedicated ramen alley packed into a few blocks. It's easily Sapporo's most photogenic stretch after dark, all neon signage and crowded sidewalks, and it's also one of the Snow Festival's three official sites every February. During the day it's quieter, so this is very much a nighttime destination.
6
Nijo Market
Nijo Market has sold fresh Hokkaido seafood since the early Meiji period, and it's kept its nickname, 'Sapporo's Kitchen,' well into the present — a few dozen stalls selling crab, sea urchin, salmon roe, and scallops, several with counters where you can eat what you just bought. Go for breakfast or an early lunch — like most fish markets, it's built around the morning catch and winds down by mid-afternoon.
7:00 AM – 6:00 PM (hours vary by stall)Minami 2-jo 1-chome, Chuo-ku, Sapporo
7
Sapporo Clock Tower
Built in 1878 as the drill hall for what would become Hokkaido University, the Clock Tower is the oldest of its kind still keeping time in Japan, thanks to a Boston-imported clock mechanism installed in 1881. It's a small, plain American-style wooden building, and a reminder of Sapporo's founding as a Meiji-era planned city built with American advisors. Inside, a small museum covers that early agricultural-college history.
8:45 AM – 5:00 PMKita 1-jo Nishi 2-chome, Chuo-ku, Sapporo
8
Moerenuma Park
Moerenuma Park is a nearly 189-hectare park built on a former landfill and designed almost entirely by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, who treated the whole site as a single artwork — a glass pyramid, a stepped 'Play Mountain,' a fountain plaza, and sweeping lawns all sit within one unified plan. Construction began in 1988 but wasn't finished until 2005, several years after Noguchi's death, so the finished park is really a posthumous realization of his design.
7:00 AM – 10:00 PM1-1 Moerenuma Koen, Higashi-ku, Sapporo
9
Sapporo White Illumination
Sapporo White Illumination has run every winter since 1981, one of Japan's longest-running light displays, spreading across Odori Park and several other downtown sites from late November into mid-March. Odori Park's stretch also hosts a German-style Christmas market, run in partnership with sister city Munich since 2002, with mulled wine and food stalls under the lights. It overlaps with the tail end of the Snow Festival season, so a February visit can catch both.
10
Sapporo's local cuisine
Sapporo is credited as the birthplace of miso ramen, a rich fermented-miso broth with thick curly noodles, traditionally finished with a pat of butter and sweet corn. Jingisukan — thin-sliced mutton and lamb grilled on a dome-shaped iron skillet with vegetables — is Hokkaido's answer to barbecue, best eaten communally with a cold Sapporo beer. Round it out with soup curry, a spiced clear broth loaded with big, mostly whole vegetables, and you've covered the three dishes that define eating in this city.

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