Asahikawa is the most popular transit city for Hokkaido travellers. The city is known nationally for its culinary specialties, snow festival and zoo, which is the most popular in Japan.
Snow Festival
The Asahikawa Winter Festival is the second largest winter festival in Hokkaido after Sapporo. The festival takes place over a week in early February, at about the same time as the Sapporo Snow Festival. Therefore, it is possible for winter visitors to visit both festivals on the same trip, as the two cities are only 80 minutes away by train from one another.
The giant snow sculpture is located at the Asahibashi site on the riverside, one of the festival’s two sites, which bears the name of the nearby Asahibashi Bridge. Other attractions vary from year to year, but generally include several smaller snow sculptures, sledding trails, snowmobile rides, horse sledding and an ice bar. The Asahibashi site also serves as a venue for the festival’s opening and closing ceremonies, both of which usually include fireworks.
The second site of the festival is the pedestrian street Heiwa Dori. About 50 ice sculptures are on display for trial in a competition. During the first days of the festival, sculptors can be seen at work, after which the sculptures are left exposed. The sculptures are particularly beautiful in the evening when they are illuminated.
Zoo of Asahiyama
The Asahiyama Zoo is a very popular zoo garden especially thanks to its enclosures that allow visitors to observe animals from different angles. Highlights include a glass tunnel through the penguin basin that allows visitors to observe underwater bird flights, and small glass domes in the middle of polar bear and wolf enclosures. Work on new enclosures and improvement of existing ones is ongoing. The animals presented here include the endemic fauna of Hokkaido, such as deer, eagles, cranes and wolves, as well as various animals from around the world, such as polar bears, monkeys, large felines and giraffes. Entry costs 1000 yen. It is possible to buy your ticket in advance, online or in the Lawson and Seven Even.
Ramens
Asahikawa is known for its shoyu broths (soya sauce). Restaurants serving shoyu-based ramen are located throughout the city. Asahikawa Ramen broth is also known to be rich enough and noodles are usually fine, hard and wavy. The range of trims is quite typical and includes green onions, pork, bamboo shoots and eggs.
Otokoyama Sake Brewery Museum
The museum of the sake brewery of Otokoyama presents the culture of brewing sake as a traditional Japanese industry and the history of Otokoyama for 350 years.
The sake of Otokoyama was quite popular to appear in Ukiyo-e and the sake produced for the shogunate of Edo was called “Gomenshu”. This sake was created by Yamamoto Saemon who ran a sake brewery named “Momenya” in Itami, Kansai at the time of Edo. The origin of the name of this sake is the Otokoyama Hachimangu shrine in Kyoto.
You can see precious materials, documents and sake sets in the Edo era, and you can also see part of the brewery when brewing sake.
Admission is free, the shop also offers tastings.
To Asahikawa
Limited Express trains connect Sapporo to Asahikawa every 30 minutes. The one-way journey takes 80 minutes, costs about 5,000 yen and is covered by the Japan Rail Pass and the Hokkaido Rail Pass. By local trains, the one-way journey takes about twice as long, but costs only 2860 yen.
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