Old Buildings

The notion of "old" in Sapporo is rather different from the rest of Japan, perhaps more like California. Anything over half a century seems to rate as historic, hardly surprising given that development of Hokkaido only started in earnest with the establishment of the Hokkaido Kaitakushi in 1869. All the buildings below (except the brick built former Hokkaido Government Offices) are in the outdoor museum within the Botanic Gardens and, whilst hardly old by global standards, they do give a feel for what became the mainstream style as Hokkaido emerged into "civilisation". If you want to see a more extensive range of typical buildings, the Historic Village of Hokkaido (Kaitaku no Mura) in the suburbs contains around sixty buildings from the region depicting a town, fishing village, farm village and mountain village.