Sapporo is unlike any other city in Japan: planned from scratch on an American grid by Meiji-era agricultural advisors in 1869, it grows wide avenues, ramen culture, and dairy farming in equal measure under Hokkaido’s enormous northern sky. Video Street View Japan’s autumn tour captures the city at its most spectacular — when the ginkgo trees of Odori Park ignite in brilliant gold from the Sapporo TV Tower to the Botanical Garden — in this Sapporo walking tour Hokkaido that reveals a city as distinctive in its urban character as it is in its food and its climate.
About This Walking Tour
Video Street View Japan is known for its meticulous, unedited walking footage, and the Sapporo autumn tour is among the channel’s most visually arresting productions. The walk begins at the Sapporo TV Tower, the red-and-white lattice structure that anchors the eastern end of Odori Park, and moves westward along the park’s central promenade — a 1.5-kilometre green corridor that bisects the city’s grid and transforms each October into a tunnel of golden ginkgo canopy. The footage records the park in 4K HDR on a crisp autumn afternoon, with fallen yellow leaves covering the paths and the foliage at peak colour against the clear blue Hokkaido sky. The tour continues south from Odori to Tanukikoji, the covered shopping arcade that has served the city since its earliest days, its glass-roofed arcade sheltering a dense row of shops selling Hokkaido confectionery, miso, dairy products, and local ceramics. The Susukino entertainment district appears at the southern edge of the route — Japan’s largest entertainment district north of Tokyo — where the density of ramen restaurants, izakayas, and beer halls reflects Hokkaido’s abundance of quality ingredients. Throughout, the video captures Sapporo’s distinctive urban texture: wide, straight streets laid on a strict north-south/east-west grid, generous public squares, and a general sense of spaciousness unusual in a Japanese city of two million people.
Highlights of Sapporo
Odori Park, running for 1.5 kilometres through the city centre, is Sapporo’s living room in every season: flower beds in summer, snow sculptures in February, golden foliage in October, and the famous Sapporo Autumn Fest in September, when breweries, dairy farms, and restaurants from across Hokkaido set up market stalls along the entire length of the park. The Sapporo TV Tower’s observation deck offers the best elevated view of the grid city, with the Hokkaido mountains visible on clear autumn days. Tanukikoji, the covered arcade stretching for seven blocks from 1-chome to 7-chome, is the oldest continuously operating commercial street in Sapporo; its covered environment makes it practical in both the bitter Hokkaido winter and the summer heat. The Former Hokkaido Government Building (the “Red Brick”), a few blocks north of Odori, is a handsome American Baroque structure built in 1888 that now houses a free museum documenting Hokkaido’s development. Sapporo Beer Museum, built in the original Kaitakushi brewery from 1876, tells the story of Hokkaido’s brewing heritage with guided tours and tasting rooms.
A Brief History of Sapporo
Before 1869, the site of Sapporo was a small Ainu settlement on the banks of the Toyohira River; the Ainu people had inhabited Hokkaido for thousands of years before Japanese settlement. The Meiji government’s Hokkaido Development Commission, established in 1869, chose the site for Hokkaido’s new capital and hired American agricultural experts — most notably Horace Capron from the US Department of Agriculture and William S. Clark of the Massachusetts Agricultural College — to advise on the planned city’s layout and land use. The result was a grid city on an American model, unlike anything else in Japan, with wide boulevards, public parks, and Western-style government buildings. Sapporo grew rapidly as a centre for Hokkaido’s agricultural, forestry, and fishing industries, and by the early twentieth century had established the breweries, dairy cooperatives, and miso and sake producers that still define Hokkaido’s food identity. The 1972 Winter Olympics, the first held in Asia, placed Sapporo on the global map and accelerated the development of the city’s ski resorts and hospitality infrastructure.
Practical Tips
New Chitose Airport connects to Sapporo station by JR rapid train in 35 minutes; the city’s four subway lines and extensive bus network cover all neighbourhoods. The Odori Park walking route is entirely flat and navigable without any map-reading beyond the TV Tower as a reference point. Autumn foliage in Odori Park typically peaks in the second and third weeks of October — check local updates as the timing varies year to year. Sapporo is genuinely cold from November through March; even in October, an extra layer is advisable after dark. Ramen Alley (Ganso Ramen Yokocho) near Susukino is a small lane of eight original ramen shops operating since the 1950s; queues form at peak hours but move quickly.
Watch & Explore More
Sapporo’s pioneering, agricultural-meets-urban character contrasts sharply with Japan’s ancient imperial cities. Explore the deer parks and temple lanes of Nara, or discover the street food and canal energy of Osaka’s Dotonbori. For more Japanese city walks in every season, subscribe to @walkingtoursvideoscom.