Where to Stay in Sapporo: It Comes Down to Midnight

If your night ends at a ramen counter that stays open until 2:00, sleep in Susukino rather than by Sapporo Station. The last subway north leaves Susukino at 0:14, and the 520-metre walkway under the street toward the station is shut from 0:30. The city dug that walkway because snow covers its centre for half the year, and there is something almost funny in how it ends: the warm way home is there all day, and it is locked at the one hour you would want it most.

By day, you can sleep almost anywhere in the centre and lose nothing. Sapporo Station and Susukino are 1.2 kilometres apart, three minutes on the Namboku subway line, with Ōdōri one stop from each. So choose your area by the end of your day, not the start of it: late nights in Susukino, early trains from the station, and one night, if you can spare it, in the hot-spring town of Jozankei, where the hot water on the street never closes.

Three minutes apart, until midnight

Think of the centre of Sapporo as one straight line. You start at the top, at Sapporo Station, where the airport train comes in. Walk south under the street and you reach Ōdōri, with its park in the middle of town. Keep going and you are in Susukino, the night district, with its towers of lit signs.

You can make most of that walk below the snow. Chi Ka Ho, the Sapporo Ekimae-dōri underground walkway, covers about 520 metres from the station to Ōdōri, with 15 exits up to the street. Its operator says it was built so people could walk the city centre safely in every season, in a place where snow lies for half the year, and that it joins the station area to Ōdōri and Susukino underground. I had not expected a city to explain a walkway by its weather so plainly, and it made the snow feel less like a hazard than like the thing the whole centre is arranged around. Picture coming in from a February morning, stamping the snow off, and walking the whole way to lunch without a coat buttoned.

Check the walkway’s hours before you trust it. It opens at 5:45 and closes at 24:30, and no one may pass outside those times. The subway stops a little earlier: the last two trains from Susukino toward the station leave at 0:05 and 0:14, weekdays and weekends alike. After that, you are left with the street or a taxi for a line that was three minutes long.

So the question is not which area is nicer. It is which end of the line you want to wake up at.

If your night ends in Susukino, sleep there

Plan a night in Susukino and you will be eating late. Daruma, the lamb counter, serves until 5:00. Tenhō, in the ramen alley that began as eight shops in 1951, stays open until 2:00 from Monday to Saturday. Shiawase no Recipe, one of the late-night parfait shops, takes its last order at 2:00. Follow the whole Susukino night, from lamb to the last glass.

If you plan to be at any of those counters after midnight, a bed in Susukino turns the end of the night into a short walk. Miss the 0:14 train and a bed by the station becomes 1.2 kilometres of street, which in January is not the same thing as 1.2 kilometres in June.

One hotel we would look at: Super Hotel Sapporo Susukino. You are about three minutes on foot from Susukino Station here, and the hotel has its own hot-spring bath, the Sorunuma-no-yu, with water carried in from Tokiwa Onsen near Lake Shikotsu and Mount Sorunuma. The bath is open from 15:00 until 9:00 the next morning, separately for men and women. Those are Susukino’s hours, not a hotel’s: after a bowl at 1:30, the hot water is still waiting. The hotel link goes to Expedia and is an affiliate link: if you book through it, we earn a commission.

If you leave town by day, sleep by the station

You arrive at Sapporo Station and you leave from it. The Rapid Airport train to New Chitose Airport takes 37 minutes at the fastest, 33 on the special rapid, and between 9:00 and 16:00 there are six trains an hour. The rapid train to Otaru, for the canal at dusk, takes 32 minutes at the fastest. See why Otaru Canal is worth reaching just after sunset.

If you have an early flight, a day trip to Otaru, or a heavy suitcase, stay by the station instead of in Susukino. You cut your mornings short, and in winter you can walk to Ōdōri underground from 5:45, before the shops above it are awake.

One hotel we would look at: JR Tower Hotel Nikko Sapporo. It is connected directly to Sapporo Station, and its hot-spring bath is on a high floor about 100 metres above the ground, looking out over the city. You end a day of trains soaking high above the city, in a tower joined to the station you arrived at. The hotel link goes to Expedia and is an affiliate link: if you book through it, we earn a commission.

Ōdōri, if you want the middle

Stay at Ōdōri and you are one stop from the station and one stop from Susukino. The Clock Tower is about five minutes on foot from Ōdōri Station, and from the tower you can walk south through Nijō Market to Tanukikoji, the covered shopping street. Take the walk from the Clock Tower on your first morning.

Choose Ōdōri if you are splitting your nights: one late, one early. You are never more than a single stop from either end of the line.

One hotel we would look at: Hotel Vista Sapporo Ōdōri, about five minutes on foot from Ōdōri Station on the Namboku line, with the bath, the toilet and the washbasin each in its own space. The hotel link goes to Expedia and is an affiliate link: if you book through it, we earn a commission.

One night in Jozankei, for the hours after the last bus

You could treat Jozankei, a hot-spring town in a river gorge about an hour from the city by bus, as a day trip, and the timetable lets you stay into the evening: the last regular bus back to the city leaves before nine.

Stay the night if you want the town after the buses stop. The kappa hand bath on the main street is open 24 hours, and the hot water on the street is still free when the day visitors have gone. Read how to use the hand bath and the egg-cooking spring before you go.

One inn we would look at: Jozankei Shika no Yu. It opened in October 1897, the thirtieth year of Meiji, with money from fourteen Sapporo notables, and it has come through war and a fire that burned it to the ground to keep going today. An inn that old still sends its own bus to the city, and for once the timetable is on your side: a free shuttle, reservation only, leaves Sapporo Station’s north exit at 15:00 and takes about an hour, and it returns from the inn at 10:00 the next morning. The inn’s page also lists a highway bus straight from New Chitose Airport, about 95 minutes.

Before you go

Checked 28 September 2026. We list no room rates; they change by the night.

Where I would sleep

I would spend the first nights in Susukino and walk home from the last bowl, because in this city the three-minute line closes before the ramen does. On the last night I would be out in Jozankei, where the hot water is on the street at any hour, and I would let the inn’s bus bring me back in the morning.

For every area on this page, see hotels in Sapporo on Expedia. That is an affiliate link: if you book through it, we earn a commission.