Sapporo

Adjacent to the expansive Nopporo Forest Park, the Historical Village of Hokkaido (Kaitaku-no Mura) assembles more than 50 relocated and restored structures from the Meiji and Taisho eras — a living streetscape that traces the island’s transformation from frontier wilderness to modern prefecture. Wooden merchant shops with lattice fronts, a red-brick railway station, a herring-mansion overseer’s house, and a pristine Shinto shrine line gravel lanes where costumed interpreters demonstrate traditional crafts: indigo dyeing, sake-barrel coopering, and the rhythmic pounding of mochi. In winter, gas lamps flicker along the main thoroughfare during the “Snow Lamp” evenings, casting a warm glow on snow-laden roofs that evokes a bygone Hokkaido. The village’s quiet authenticity makes it a favourite for period-film crews and travelers seeking a tactile connection to the pioneer spirit that shaped Japan’s north.

On the north-eastern edge of Sapporo, a former waste-treatment site has been reborn as a 189-hectare masterpiece of land art, the final major project of sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Moerenuma Park unfolds as a series of geometric playgrounds: the iconic Glass Pyramid “Hidamari” houses a light-filled gallery and café; Mount Moere, a gentle grass-covered pyramid, invites picnickers to its summit for city-to-mountain vistas; and the Sea Fountain erupts in choreographed jets up to 25 metres high, synchronized to music on summer evenings. In winter, the park transforms into a cross-country skiing wonderland, its undulating hills groomed for loops that pass outdoor sculptures dusted in snow. Every path, pond, and plantation was conceived as a single sculptural composition — a place where art, ecology, and recreation dissolve into one another.

Lined with gas lamps that flicker to life at dusk, Otaru Canal curves through the heart of this historic port city like a vein of amber light. Built in the 1920s to serve Hokkaido’s booming herring and coal trade, the waterway fell into disuse before a citizen-led preservation movement transformed it into a romantic promenade. Today, the brick warehouses that once stored kelp and glass floats house boutique shops, cafés, and the Otaru Museum of Art. A stroll along the stone-paved path reveals the canal’s dual personality: by day, a peaceful ribbon reflecting the sky and the silhouettes of converted storehouses; by night, a glowing corridor where lanterns double in the water, creating a scene that has inspired countless photographers and filmmakers.