Stayed in Sapporo for a couple of nights between Christmas and New Year last year and snowed like buggery most of the time we were there. Nothing wrong with that, except it makes the traffic rather diabolical.
We drove over from Rusutsu, stopped at Niseko for a few hours to do some sledding then headed to Sapporo. It’s a nice drive, slow going but at least you’re moving, which is more than I can say for the traffic in Sapporo city. Basically it took us about an hour to to drive the final 5km’s within the downtown area. Absolute chaos. Don’t know if it was because of the time, the fact it was snowing, or the fact there was a lot of snow and sleet on the road and it’s basically like driving on a road in rural India. Probably all of the above but regardless, not a great start.
Not millions of things to do in Sapporo City itself but you can check out the best things to do in our information pages. There’s loads of festivals and events here throughout the year here, and you can also see what they’re all about in our information pages. I don’t think I’d go back here in a hurry, or really at all. I guess if you wanted to do a night after skiing in Niseko or somewhere else, you could check it out, but I wouldn’t be recommending it to anybody.
To go with the rough start, had a rough end, spending well over an hour getting though the longest security line I’ve ever encountered anywhere in the world, at New Chitose Airport. What an absolute shambles that was and almost put me off ever going back to anywhere in Hokkaido again. They’d had a lot of snow that week and hundreds of flights were cancelled, postpones or delayed and I guess it just all accumulated to become one giant chaotic mess. About 2,000-3,000 people trying to get through 2 security lines – ridiculous. Come on people, let’s use our common sense, I don’t think ISIS are going to setup in Sapporo and launch an attack from there (thanks Osama). Move it along.
View our Info pages for things to do in Sapporo or send us any questions or comments via email or ask us on twitter.
