Hokkaido University is a national university in Sapporo. It predecessor, the Sapporo Agricultural College was founded in 1876. The motto of this university is “Boys, be ambitious”. Dr. Clark remarked this phrase when he left. Since this school invited foreign teachers to introduce western science and technology in the early stages, one of its philosophies is “Global Perspective”. Nowadays, more than 1,500 international students have come to this university from all over the w

Aurora Town is an underground mall which is lying from Odori subway station to the Sapporo TV Tower. It has about 50 shops which include fast food restaurants, a convenience store, and a bookstore. This underground mall is surrounded by some important buildings like the city hall, the citizen hall, the post office, banks, and a department store. Thus, there are many occasions to pass through this mall. This underground mall has some attractions from time to time. It used to h

Pole Town is one of the underground malls in Sapporo. This underground mall lasts for about 400 meters between Odori station and Susukino station. By the way, another underground mall is called Aurora town. Now, these underground malls celebrate the 45th anniversary. I sometimes pass through this underground mall. It is quite convenient to move to Sususkino area from Odori station since I don’t have to worry about the weather such as snow or rain. It seems that the locals ten

500-m gallery is officially known as Sapporo Odori 500-m underground walkway gallery and is located between subway Odori station and Bus center mae station. This gallery used to be temporary and it has become a permanent facility since 2011. This is the longest museum of museums in Japanese stations. Admission fee is free, of course. Artworks made by artists in Portland are displayed currently. By the way, Portland in U.S. is the sister city of Sapporo. I saw the artworks a f

Le trois is a commercial facility opened in 2015. It is located in Odori Street, the main street. An annex of a local department store used to be in this place. The most impressive characteristic of this facility is that it targets on three generations of women. It means that something “beautiful”, “lovely” and “delicious” is available in this facility. For example, there are beauty clinic, dentist, nail salon, esthetic salon, gift shop, pet shop, accessory shop, cosmetic sh

Every year, a jumbo Christmas tree is set in the Atrium of Sapporo Factory. This year, the Christmas tree was brought from Hiroo Santaland, Hokkaido. The height of this tree is about 15 meters and it was decorated by LED and ornaments. Since it snowed historically and its access was not so convenient on that day, not so many visitors have come to this place to see the tree. Some of them seem to come from overseas. The guts to come there on that condition should be respecte

AJI NO TOKEIDAI is ramen restaurants of a chain. It means “The Clock Tower of taste”. I have no idea what this means. AJI NO TOKEIDAI has operated since more than 40 years ago in Sapporo. In addition, it can be found easily all over this city. Thus, this restaurant is quite ordinary and nothing special for me. However, the taste of its ramen is one of the best among ramen which I have eaten. My recommendation is Miso ramen. This is a basic type of ramen, but it is suitable fo

Seicomart is a Hokkaido-based convenience store and more than 1,000 stores of it are in Hokkaido. Even if you go to a backwoods town in Hokkaido, you would find this convenience store. Its chain is one of the oldest convenience store chains in Japan. The lineup of goods is slightly different from other major chains. Firstly, it sells many kinds of liquor like wine because local liquor shops originally started this convenience store. Secondly, many of its stores serve freshly

Bikkuri Donkey is a hamburger restaurant of a chain. The headquarters of the chain is in Sapporo and more than 300 restaurants are across the country. There are many restaurants around Sapporo. Many buildings of Bikkuri Donkey are unique since they are decorated by lumber or stones. One of these restaurants puts a plane on its rooftop! Bikkuri means “surprised” in Japanese. Thus, its name shows its characteristic directly. On the other hand, its dishes are relatively simple b

DONGURI is a local bakery which has 8 shops in Sapporo. Donguri means "acorn" in Japanese. While Sapporo is a bakery battleground, this small bakery has gotten good word of mouth from locally. Especially Chikuwa pan (Fish sausage bread), its signature dish, made this bakery very famous. Its ingredients are quite ordinary foods, but I found its taste was extremely good. In general, local people don’t frequently go to a shop which serves expensive or tasteless foods. Wh