Pole Town and Aurora Town

Long before the modern Chikaho walkway opened in 2011, Sapporo already understood the value of getting its citizens underground in winter. Pole Town and Aurora Town, both dating from 1971, are the city's original subterranean shopping streets, radiating from Odori Station at the heart of Chuo-ku. Between them they form an L-shaped network of bright, heated shopping arcades that have been part of the rhythm of Sapporo life for more than half a century, and together with the newer walkway they complete the underground spine that lets you cross the whole downtown without a coat.

Pole Town runs roughly 400 metres south from Odori toward Susukino, following the line of Ekimae-dori. It is the livelier and more youthful of the two, packed with fashion boutiques, shoe and accessory shops, cosmetics stores, cafes and fast-food counters aimed at students and young office workers. Because it links Odori directly to Susukino, the nightlife district, it is busy from midday well into the evening, and it feeds the crowds that surface into the neon of Susukino after dark.

Aurora Town runs east-west beneath Odori Park itself, connecting Odori Station toward the Sapporo TV Tower at the park's eastern end. It has a slightly calmer, more mixed character, with a broader range of shops, restaurants, bookstores and services, plus direct connections into the basements of major department stores and the underground bus terminal. During the great seasonal events staged in Odori Park—the Snow Festival in February, the beer gardens of high summer, the White Illumination and Christmas market in December—Aurora Town becomes a vital warming route and circulation loop, and its exits deliver you straight up into the festivities.

What makes this pair worth understanding, beyond the shopping, is the way they knit into the wider network. From Aurora Town and Pole Town you can pass through Odori Station into the Chikaho walkway and continue north all the way to Sapporo Station, or south into Susukino. In practice this means the entire commercial core of the city—department stores, the station, the entertainment quarter, Odori Park and dozens of subway exits—is stitched together by climate-controlled passages. For a visitor arriving in the depths of a Hokkaido winter, when temperatures sit well below freezing and snow is heaped along every street, this is genuinely liberating.

The malls are not glamorous in the way of a big-city luxury arcade; they are practical, everyday spaces, a little dated in places, full of the ordinary business of a working northern city. That ordinariness is part of their appeal. You can browse Hokkaido-brand sweets and souvenirs, grab a bowl of soup curry or ramen, buy a forgotten pair of gloves, and shelter from the weather, all while watching Sapporo go about its day.

Access is free and effortless: every line of the Sapporo subway converges on Odori Station, from which both malls open directly. Even if you do no shopping at all, it is worth walking the route once so that, when the snow comes down, you already know how to get from your hotel to dinner without ever surfacing.