Using an eSIM in Sapporo

What Sapporo is like on a phone

Sapporo has two crowds: people who come for snow — slopes, ice festival, powder day after powder day — and people who come in summer to escape the heat and drive around Hokkaido. The street plan is a generous grid, and a long underground walkway links the central blocks, which stops being a novelty and becomes a necessity below freezing. In-town coverage is continuous, that walkway included. What changes is the moment you leave the built-up area for the mountains, where the gaps between masts become something you can feel.

À l'atterrissage

The gateway is New Chitose (CTS), a fair way out of town. Turn the eSIM on in the cabin, because you will want it immediately: on a heavy snow day the first thing to check is which rapid service into the city is still running. The forty-minute ride crosses open ground and stands of forest between settlements, so the line sways a little without dropping out. Arriving instead on a long-distance train from elsewhere in Hokkaido, Sapporo Station feeds straight into the underground walkway, which is usable from the first step.

Où la couverture change

The underground walkway linking Sapporo Station to Odori and Susukino is usable along its whole length, which matters, because in winter more people are down there than up on the pavement. Street level in the centre is untroubled; a whiteout hurts visibility, not the network. Head up Mount Moiwa or out to the ski fields ringing the city and the base stations and car parks are well served while the gullies and thick tree lines are not. Keep driving into rural Hokkaido and the gaps simply get longer.

What a day here costs in data

A day inside the city runs about 800MB–1.2GB; the place is simply less demanding to navigate than Tokyo. A ski day changes the shape of the usage rather than only the size: snow reports, lift-status pages, and video clips off the slope, which are big files. Two gigabytes arrives easily on days like that. The thing people forget is that below-freezing air drains a battery far faster than usual, and a dead phone limits you exactly as much as an empty allowance does.

Districts travellers ask about

• Odori — The long central park and the winter festival ground; during the event the crowd is dense enough to slow things at peak hours, so arrange to meet by a named sculpture or block number rather than a map pin.
• Susukino — The late-night eating and drinking quarter, where restaurants stack up floor by floor inside older buildings; deep inside some of them the signal fades, so order the ride home from the ground floor or the entrance rather than the table.
• North of Sapporo Station — The university and office side, quieter than the south exit and comfortably connected — a workable place to take a morning call before the day's travelling starts.
• Maruyama — A residential district against the foot of the hill with a large park behind it; the streets are fine, but walk deep into the shrine's woods and the tall cover starts thinning the line.

Day trips out of the city

• Otaru — Under an hour along the shoreline, with the line holding through the stretch where the track runs right against the sea. The canal district is normal; only inside the converted stone warehouses, where the walls are thick, does it fade.
• Noboribetsu — An onsen town folded into a valley: the approach road and the hotel strip work, but the sulphur crater walk and the trails around it drop out in stretches, so save the return bus times before you set off up the path.
• Niseko — Hours of driving to the slopes, past stretches where houses are far apart and the line thins with them. The village and the lift base are connected; treat the back-country runs as places where you will not be reachable.