Sapporo

Sapporo is the capital of Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of Japan, on the Ishikari Plain. Ainu words for a dry, great river are the usual explanation of the name, and in 1972 the city held the first Winter Olympics in Asia.

The Meiji government chose the site in 1869 for the Hokkaido Development Commission, which laid out the new town on a grid of straight blocks, with Ōdōri Park as a firebreak between the government quarter and the merchant streets. Sapporo Agricultural College opened in the 1870s, and the American educator William S. Clark spent its first months there; his parting words, Boys, be ambitious, became a motto of the school, which grew into Hokkaido University. The college's wooden drill hall from the same decade is the Sapporo Clock Tower, whose clock still strikes the hours.

Sapporo Breweries began as the brewery of the Development Commission, and its red-brick malt house still stands in the city, while the red star on its labels comes from the commission's flag. Ishiya, a confectioner based in Sapporo, makes Shiroi Koibito, white chocolate pressed between thin butter biscuits. Miso ramen was first served in Sapporo noodle shops in the 1950s and spread from there across Japan.

The Sapporo Snow Festival began in the early 1950s with snow statues made by local high school students in Ōdōri Park, and it grew into a winter event with huge sculptures of ice and packed snow along the park. Isamu Noguchi, the Japanese American sculptor, drew up Moerenuma Park in the north-east of the city as a single work of art, with grass hills, a glass pyramid and fountains, and it opened after his death. Ski jumps on the hills west of the center were built for the Olympics and are still used for World Cup events.