Odori Park

Odori Park Through the Middle of Sapporo

Today's city of Sapporo was built in a wide, flat area with several Ainu settlements. The Ainu called the area sat poro pet meaning "dry great river", which the Japanese settlers spelled in katakana as サッ・ポロ・ペッ, literally sa-tsu–po-ro–pe-tsu. I noticed that the local people clearly pronounce both of the doubled consonants in "Hokkaidō" and "Sapporo".

During the feudal centuries, there was only limited Japanese settlement on Hokkaidō with repeated Ainu revolts against attempted feudal rule.

Russia began settling Kamchatka, Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and the Okhotsk coast of Siberia from 1600 to the mid 1800s, leading the Tokugawa Shōgunate to take control of most of Hokkaidō, then still called Ezochi, in the 1850s.

The Emperor returned to power with the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The following year, the island was absorbed into Japanese territory and renamed Hokkaidō. The Meiji forced assimilation programs mostly wiped out the Ainu population and their culture.

The Meiji government asked the U.S. government for help. American experts in agriculture, mining, timber, and industry became advisors, including U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant's Secretary of Agriculture, Horace Capron.

Construction of the new town of Sapporo began along an east-west strip, with a rectangular grid of streets spreading in all direction. In 1880, the rail line to Otaru was finished.

The central strip became Ōdōri Kōen or Odori Park. It was converted to a potato farm during World War II, and restored to a park after the end of Occupation in 1950. It's a series of 13 blocks, each 110 meters east-west and 65 meters north-south. Now Sapporo is Japan's fifth-largest city, the largest city north of Tōkyō.

The park and east-west streets have a view of the mountains to the west of Sapporo's location in the flat basin. Some snow remained on the peaks during my visit in mid May.

To Odori Park

I walked north from where I was staying on Tanukikoji Passage. It was only five blocks north from Tanukikoji to Odori Park.

As an engineer, I was always noticing the visible infrastructure in Japan.

I interpreted this tower as having been designed for the days when microwave point-to-point links were dominant. See my visit to Aizu-Wakamatsu for that history.

The tower's owner could rent space on the various decks for carriers to mount their antennas, small to medium terrestrial dishes, and pyramidal horns. Today, though, it seems mostly vacant as fiber networking has become dominant. I reached the park a block before reaching the tower.

The Sapporo TV Tower is a 147-meter tower with an observation deck at 90 meters above one end of the park.

Television transmitters moved to a nearby mountain peak, the TV Tower now hosts FM broadcast transmitters. In Japan the FM broadcast band is 76–95 MHz. versus 88–108 MHz in western Europe and North America.

Here's the view looking east toward the TV Tower.

And looking west toward the mountains.

The grass gets worn with all the visitors, but there is no litter at all.

There are a few trash cans, and all litter goes into them.

As is the case in most Japanese cities, smoking is prohibited. Because this is Japan, people follow the rules. No one smokes, and there are no cigarette butts on the ground.

Super Rescue Sapporo emergency trucks passed by.

The Sapporo Clock Tower was built in 1878 as part of the former Sapporo Agricultural College, now Hokkaidō University. It's the oldest building in Sapporo.

A small river flows north across the east end of Odori Park, passing the Sapporo Sewerage Science Museum (yes, I visited it) on its way to the coast, Ishikari Bay, and the Sea of Japan.

The JR Hokkaidō trains are decorated in purple. Purple stripes on the exterior and purple upholstery inside, referencing the many purple flowers of the island. The lilac tree, Syringa reticulata, is the island's official tree.

Strains have blossoms in a variety of colors from a dark purple through lavender to white.

Next❯ Industrial History in Sapporo