Nopporo Forest Park

On Friday, June 12th, I took a day off work to visit Nopporo Forest Park with a friend. The day was hot and humid, it rained the day before and was supposed to rain the day after. Thankfully, Friday had no rain in the forecast. My friend was worried about bears and snakes, but we both saw online that the odds of encountering either were very low so it didn’t dissuade us.

We met at Shin-Sapporo on Tozai line to take the bus to the park together. Since we had a little bit of time, we bought some bread from the Sun Piazza mall’s Donguri and the Aeon mall. The bus would have been tricky to find if my friend didn’t arrive before me, but the bus stop is located passing through Exit 8 (not 6). The bus took about 20 minutes and dropped us off next the museum. You can buy a day ticket to access both the museum and Historic Village, but my friend and I were only visiting the Forest Park. From the museum, we just started walking towards the until we found an entrance into the forest.

The trail was easily walkable, though some parts where there were old wooden steps were steep. Since it’s June, you could hear many cicadas (蝉). Being a Friday afternoon, we only came across older men and women, behind our masks we greeted polite “konnichiwa” to them. A few carried walking sticks and I saw two men with cameras. I had taken my camera to practice taking pictures hoping to see some wildlife but all I found were bugs like snails, hairy caterpillars (毛虫), and pincer bugs. We could hear woodpeckers and owls, but we couldn’t spot them. The forest was very nice and lush and had plenty of potential photo spots. Many cute tree stumps, fallen logs, and overgrown areas. There was a nice old wooden bridge and an area where steps descended in a swirl. If I was a better photographer and my friend was a more willing subject, I would have taken more pictures of him.

There were maps of the trail located in decent intervals so it was easy enough to know where we were by looking at the map, but most of the signposts at crossroads were only in Japanese. There were also plenty of benches to take a seat and relax. By a small fenced off lake, there was a gazebo where we ate our sandwiches and took a rest. There were also toilets nearby. We had walked for around 2 hours total and then decided to head downtown to eat an early dinner. There was still a lot we didn’t walk in the park and you could easily spend hours walking in it. Honestly, a really great way to get some peaceful exercise.

The bus heading back was a little confusing to find, but we were able to ask the security guard near the Hokkaido Centennial Memorial Tower and he pointed us down the hill to the closest bus stop. When in doubt, there is Sapporo Keisei High School near the memorial tower area and there is a bus stop across from it that should return you to Shin-Sapporo (JR and Subway) station.