Historical Village of Hokkaido Travel Video Guide

Historical Village of Hokkaido Travel Itinerary

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The brewery may pull the biggest crowds, but the best of the attractions around Sapporo - indeed, one of the most impressive sights on the entire island - is the Historical Village of Hokkaido (Tues-Sun 9.30am-4.30pm; Y610), some 14km east of the city centre. This impressive museum, laid out across a spacious park, gathers together some sixty buildings constructed around Hokkaido between the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as large-scale immigration from Honshu cranked up. Wandering around the village's four main areas, representing town, farm, mountain and fishing communities, will give you a strong picture of what Hokkaido looked like before prefabricated buildings and concrete expressways became the norm.

The buildings have been restored as beautifully inside as out and spruced up with displays related to their former use, be it a sweet shop, a silkworm house or a woodcutter's shanty. There are guides in some houses (explaining in Japanese only) and written English explanations in all. It's a good idea to wear slip-on shoes, as you'll be taking them off a lot to explore the interiors. In summer, you can hop aboard the horse-drawn trolley car (Y200) that plies the main street - in winter this is replaced by a sleigh. Some of the houses are shut from December to April, but the village is worth visiting even then for its special atmosphere when blanketed in snow.

To cover the whole site will take you a good half-day and it's a nice place to bring a picnic. Otherwise, there are a couple of inexpensive restaurants and refreshment stops within the village. You can extend your visit by exploring the neighbouring grounds of Nopporo Forest Park , created to commemorate Hokkaido's centennial and containing the mildly interesting Historical Museum of Hokkaido (Tues-Sun 9.30am-4.30pm; Y300) and the Centennial Memorial Tower , a one-hundred-metre-tall metal spike which you can ascend for a

free view of the city.

Three JR buses run directly from Sapporo Station each morning to the Historical Village in around an hour. There are more frequent buses from platform 10 at the terminus beneath Shin Sapporo Station, connected to the city centre by both train and subway. The bus journey from Shin Sapporo Station takes only fifteen minutes, but note that the last bus departs at 1.50pm (July 26-Aug 16 2.10pm). A taxi to or from the park to Shin Sapporo will cost you around Y1000

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