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Sapporo was established in 1869 as the administrative headquarters for the development of Hokkaido, Japan's northern island. It was planned on a grid layout inspired by Kyoto -- wide avenues intersecting at right angles, with Odori Park running east-west through the center as a green spine. The population reached one million by 1970 and now sits at 1.96 million. The city receives nearly five meters of snow annually, more than almost any other city of comparable size in the world, and the infrastructure to cope with it is considerable.

The 1972 Winter Olympics made Sapporo the first Asian city to host the Winter Games.

The Snow Festival (Yuki Matsuri), held every February since 1950, draws over two million visitors to Odori Park for enormous snow sculptures -- precise replicas of world monuments, scenes from anime, abstract forms -- built and melted within a single week. The Sapporo Brewery, founded in 1876 by Seibei Nakagawa after he trained in Germany, is the oldest surviving brewery in Japan and still operates a museum and beer hall in a heritage brick complex a short walk from the downtown.