Heritage Walking
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Sapporo Central: Red Brick, Clock Tower & Odori

Sapporo's planned city in one straight line, from the station to the Susukino crossing, by way of the pioneers' red brick office, the clock tower, Odori Park, the television tower, the river the grid was drawn from, the fish market and the covered arcade. Ten stops, about 75 minutes, mostly along one wide street with an underground walkway beneath it for the coldest days.

This is a self-guided walk, not a guided tour with a leader: no booking, no fixed start time. See the walking route and the walking map before you go, then follow the numbers — the audio guide plays by itself as you reach each stop. Free, with no app to install and no sign-up.

At ~75 min it fits a half day of independent travel, and joining it to another walk in Sapporo makes a full-day itinerary.

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Sapporo, Japan · ~75 min · 2.9 km · 10 stops

Stops on this walk

1. Sapporo Station, South Exit 札幌駅

One straight street runs from this doorway through the whole centre of the city.

Stand with your back to the station doors and look straight down the wide street in front of you. That is Sapporo Ekimae dori, the main street of the city. It runs south in one straight line through Odori Park to the Susukino crossing and on to Nakajima Park. Sapporo was laid out as a grid in the 1870s, and from this doorway you can read the grid with your own eyes. A station has stood here since November 1880. The first one was the end of the Horonai Railway, built to carry coal from the mines inland down to the port at Otaru. It was the first railway in Hokkaido and only the third in Japan, and it was built to American standards rather than British ones. The town it served was a planned government town barely ten years old. The tracks were raised onto the present elevated structure around 1990. The glass tower above you, the JR Tower, opened in 2003 and stands 173 metres tall. This is the busiest station on the JR Hokkaido network, and in winter it is also the warmest doorway into the centre. An underground walkway called Chi Ka Ho starts here and runs south to Odori, where it joins the underground shopping streets that continue to Susukino. When the pavements are icy or the wind is cutting, that passage shadows almost exactly the route of this walk.

Shoes with a grippy sole matter more than a heavy coat for this walk, because the whole route is on cleared but often icy pavement. If a stretch outside looks bad, drop into Chi Ka Ho and come up at a later exit.

2. Kita 3 jo Plaza (Akapura)

A row of century old ginkgo trees that frames the red brick office at the far end.

Look west along the row of ginkgo trees. At the far end, framed by the trees and the buildings on either side, is the red brick government office. This short stretch of Kita 3 jo was designed to deliver exactly that view. The brick paved plaza under your feet is called Akapura, a nickname that simply means red brick plaza, and it opened in 2014. The street itself is older than it looks. In 1924 this became the first paved road in Sapporo. The following year thirty two ginkgo trees were planted along it to separate the carriageway from the footpath. Those trees are still here, and they are considered the oldest street trees surviving anywhere in Hokkaido. In late autumn they turn gold against the red brick, and after the first snow the dark trunks stand out against the white. When the city turned the road into a plaza, it paved it with about two hundred and ten thousand bricks made in Ebetsu, east of Sapporo. Strips of pale Sapporo soft stone run through the brick. Red brick and soft grey stone are the two building materials of old Sapporo, and the plaza was designed to put both underfoot.

The plaza doubles as an event space, so on festival days tents or a stage may sit in the middle of the view. The brick paving turns slippery in snow, so walk slowly and keep to the cleared strip.

3. Former Hokkaido Government Office (Red Brick) 北海道庁旧本庁舎

Red stars on red brick, the mark of the office that opened Hokkaido.

The red brick building in front of you is the former Hokkaido Government Office, and everyone in Sapporo calls it Akarenga, the red brick. Look at the gables and the dome. The red five pointed stars set into the walls are the mark of the Kaitakushi, the government office that opened Hokkaido to settlement in the 1870s. The star stood for the North Star, and the same mark survives on Sapporo beer. The building was finished in 1888 in an American style of neo baroque. It took about two and a half million bricks, fired in the villages of Shiroishi and Toyohira nearby. In 1909 a fire gutted the interior and only the brick walls survived. It was rebuilt by 1911. The octagonal dome you see was put back in 1968, the same year the government moved into a new office block behind it. For eighty years this was the centre of Hokkaido's administration. In 2019 the building closed for a long renovation that strengthened it against earthquakes, and it reopened in July 2025. The exhibition floors inside now charge a small admission. They cover the history of the building, of Hokkaido and of the Ainu, with rooms on Sakhalin and the northern islands. Whether or not you go in, the front garden is open. It is at its best when the lilacs bloom in spring and when the leaves turn in autumn.

The building has closure days and its hours change, so check before you count on going inside. In winter the garden paths are packed snow, and the best photo is from the gate with the whole facade in frame.

4. Sapporo Clock Tower 札幌市時計台

Smaller than you expect, and the oldest working tower clock in Japan.

The white wooden building with the clock is smaller than most people expect, and that is part of its story. Look at the roof line. Under the gable is a red star, the mark of the Kaitakushi again. This was built in 1878 as the drill hall of Sapporo Agricultural College, the school that became Hokkaido University. William Clark, the American who set up the college, asked for the hall, and another American, William Wheeler, designed it. The clock came later. In 1881 a weight driven pendulum clock made by E Howard and Company of Boston was fitted into a new tower. It struck its first hour on the twelfth of August that year. It is still the original mechanism, and it is the oldest working tower clock in Japan. The bell strikes every hour, so if you are here close to the hour, wait for it. In 1906 the whole building was moved about a hundred metres to this spot. Japanese guidebooks like to list the clock tower among the three most disappointing sights in the country, because the office blocks around it have swallowed the view. Sapporo's citizens see it differently. The city charter opens with the line, we are the citizens of Sapporo, where the bell of the clock tower rings. It is a small building, but it is the one the city chose to describe itself by.

For a photo, cross to the south side of the street and step back, which gets the whole tower in without the office blocks pressing in. The museum inside is small, and the hall upstairs is still used for concerts.

5. Odori Park, Nishi 3 chome

A park that was drawn as a firebreak, and now hosts the snow festival.

You are standing in a park that is also a street. Odori runs east to west for about one and a half kilometres, from the television tower to the old courthouse at the west end. It is about a hundred metres wide. Look both ways along it. The park divides the city into its north and south halves, and every address on either side counts its blocks from this strip. It was not meant to be a park. In 1871 the planners left this strip open as a firebreak, so that a fire in the wooden town could not jump across. It was called Shiribeshi dori. In 1909 the landscape designer Nagaoka Yasuhei turned the strip into a proper park. Today it has fountains here at Nishi 3 and at Nishi 4, and about four hundred lilac trees. That is why the city's lilac festival is held here. For a week in February this lawn disappears under the Sapporo Snow Festival. It began in 1950, when six high school students built six snow statues here. Now it fills the park with sculptures the size of buildings and draws around two million visitors. In other seasons the smell to follow is grilled corn. The corn wagons, toukibi in the local word, have sold roasted and boiled Hokkaido corn in this park since the Meiji era. They run from late April to early October.

During the snow festival the lawns are closed off and the walkways are packed snow, so give yourself twice the usual time to cross the park. Outside winter, the corn wagons stand near the fountains, and a bench with a view of the television tower is the place to eat it.

6. Sapporo TV Tower さっぽろテレビ塔

The 1957 tower that closes the east end of the park, with a deck ninety metres up.

Look up. The steel lattice tower above you closes the east end of Odori Park. The large digital clock on its side is the one the whole street tells the time by. The tower was finished in 1957 and designed by Naito Tachu, the structural engineer who also designed Tokyo Tower. It stands in Nishi 1 chome, the very first block of the park. It was built as a television transmitter, and for decades its antenna carried the city's channels. The transmitters have since moved to other rooftops, and by 2021 the last of them had gone. What remains is the observation deck about ninety metres up, reached by lift, and the clock. The clock was added in 1961 as a gift from the Matsushita electrical company, the firm now called Panasonic. From the deck the whole length of Odori lies below you, green in summer and white in winter, with the hills of Maruyama and Okurayama behind it. In 2025 the tower was registered as a national tangible cultural property. It is a late honour for a structure that was once the most prominent thing on the skyline and is now hemmed in by office blocks. From the ground, the best view of it is from the middle of the park, a block or two west, with the fountains in front.

The observation deck is paid, and the queue is longest after dark in festival season. If the weather is clear, the view west down the park is better in the morning with the sun behind you.

7. Sosei River Park

A ditch dug in 1866 that became the line every Sapporo address is measured from.

The narrow channel in front of you, with its stone banks and sculptures, is the Sosei River. It is the reason every Sapporo address sounds like a grid reference. The city counts its blocks west and east from this line, so Nishi 1 chome is on this bank and Higashi 1 chome is on the other. Look along it. It runs dead straight, because it was never a natural river. It was dug in 1866, before Sapporo existed, by Otomo Kametaro, an official of the shogunate who was settling farmers here and needed water for them. People called it Otomo bori, the Otomo ditch. When the new government laid out its planned town a few years later, it took the ditch as the baseline for the whole grid. In 1874 it was renamed the Sosei River, the river of creation. For most of the twentieth century a busy road ran right alongside it, and the river was something you glimpsed between cars. In the 2000s the city put that road into a tunnel beneath you, and in 2011 the strip above it opened as this park. Now the park follows the water from north of Odori down toward Susukino. Along the way the old Nijo fish market and the eastern end of the Tanukikoji arcade open directly onto it.

This is the quietest stretch of the walk, and in summer the stone steps down to the water are where office workers eat lunch. In winter the steps ice over, so stay on the upper path and cross the river at the bridges with the traffic lights.

8. Nijo Market

Crab, salmon and sea urchin on ice, sold on this spot since the first years of the city.

Look at what is on the ice in front of the shops. Crab, salmon, sea urchin and scallops, laid out so that you can see them from the street. This is Nijo Market, a couple of blocks of fishmongers and grocers wedged into the centre of the city. It has been selling fish on this spot since the earliest years of Sapporo. The story the market tells about itself starts with fishermen from the Ishikari coast, north of the city. In the early Meiji years they began coming into the new town and selling their catch here. A fish street grew up on the second block south of Odori, and the name Nijo, which simply means second block, stuck. After the Second World War, when sellers of dried goods and prepared food moved in beside the fish, Nijo Market became the name everyone used. The seafood you see today was bought at auction that morning at the city's central wholesale market, and most of it is from Hokkaido waters. The shops open early and start pulling their shutters down towards evening, so this is a morning and lunchtime place. Many have a counter or a tiny restaurant behind the display, and a rice bowl piled with the day's seafood is what most people come for. In winter the crab is at its best and the market is at its busiest.

Prices are marked, and crab is sold by weight, so ask for the total before it goes on the scale. Many shops will pack seafood in ice for travel, so ask if you want to carry it.

9. Tanukikoji Shopping Arcade

Nine hundred metres under one roof, named after a trickster animal.

You are under a roof that runs for about nine hundred metres. Tanukikoji is a covered shopping arcade seven blocks long, from Nishi 1 chome by the river to Nishi 7. It is one of the oldest shopping streets in Hokkaido. Look at the mix. Drugstores and souvenir shops stand beside old family businesses, game halls and a tiny shrine. The street dates from about 1873, when a theatre called the Higashi za opened here and eating houses and amusement halls gathered around it. The name means raccoon dog alley, and nobody agrees on why. One old story says the women who stood in the doorways and talked men inside were compared to tanuki, the shape shifting trickster of Japanese folklore. Other stories exist. The street has kept the name and made a mascot of the animal. The arcade roof was built block by block, and today all seven blocks are covered. You can walk from the river to Nishi 7 without seeing the sky. About two hundred shops belong to the arcade association. At Nishi 5 chome, set back between the shops, is the Honjin Tanuki Daimyojin shrine, moved there in 1979, where shoppers stop to pray. Where the arcade crosses Ekimae dori it connects to the Pole Town underground mall, which is how Sapporo shops in January.

The arcade is open to the weather at every cross street, so the wind funnels through in winter. Most shops stay open into the evening, many offer tax free shopping to visitors, and weekday mornings are the quiet time.

10. Susukino Crossing

The whisky sign and the crossing at the heart of one of Japan's three great nightlife districts.

Look across the crossing at the big illuminated sign of a bearded man in a frock coat raising a glass. That is the Nikka whisky sign on the Susukino Building, and it is the postcard image of this district. The crossing where Ekimae dori meets Minami 4 jo is the centre of Susukino. The district ranks with Kabukicho in Tokyo and Nakasu in Fukuoka as one of the three great entertainment districts of Japan. It began as something more specific. In 1871 the Kaitakushi, the development office building the new town, set aside the blocks south of here as a licensed pleasure quarter. The brothels were moved out of the centre in 1920, but the restaurants and drinking places stayed and multiplied. Even the name is argued over. It may come from susuki, the tall grass that grew here. Or it may come from Usui Tatsuyuki, the official who supervised the quarter's construction, whose surname is written with the same character. Today the district is block after block of restaurants, bars, karaoke and hotels. On winter nights the steam from the ramen shops hangs in the cold air. Ramen Yokocho, a narrow alley lined wall to wall with ramen counters, is a short walk from this corner. A bowl of Sapporo miso ramen is what most people queue for. In February the snow festival puts its ice sculptures along this street, lit from inside, so that the crossing glows blue and white long after dark.

Touts work the pavements after dark, and the places they lead you to are rarely the good ones. Choose a shop with prices shown at the door. The subway station is under this crossing, and the underground walkway runs all the way back north to Sapporo Station.