Maruyama Park — Attraction in Sapporo

Best place to go to see the shimaenaga birds! These birds that are only found in Hokkaido in the whole world so they’re quite a rare sight to see, I definitely recommend squeezing this place in your itinerary to see them! Come early in the morning, by 9 all of them had pretty much left the park so I recommend coming between 7-8 for best chances. I followed the sound of high pitched chirping and found an entire flock of them at the very tops of the trees. They may be hard to see if you don’t have good eyesight, binoculars, a professional camera, or an iPhone 14 Pro because they are really tiny and hang out at the very tops of the trees about 20 feet off the ground. I have perfect vision so I could spot them well enough with just my eyes but just be warned if you have bad eyesight to bring your glasses or a pair of binoculars. We managed to take these photos with the iPhone 14 Pro camera on RAW mode zoomed in at max but a normal phone camera or normal camera without some crazy huge attachment won’t be able to catch them. These birds are so incredibly cute and probably my new favorite birds now after coming to Hokkaido!

Also, if you don’t care much for looking at rare birds this is also a great park for fun snow activities if you come in winter. They have tubes you can borrow for free to slide down the snow hills, an ice slide, and it’s also a great place for snowman building, snow ball fights, and snow angels! Definitely recommend coming here for all sorts of...

A great local park where locals would use to go for a run, bring their kids to the playground, to Maruyama zoo, or to hike Mt Maruyama.

We hiked Mt Maruyama, which is one of the hikes in Sapporo without having to spend too much time traveling to get to the destination. Maruyama Park is only 20 mins from Sapporo station, and we could see the whole city of Sapporo from the peak of it. We went mid-October 2024 hoping to see more autumn leaves, but we are still a little bit too early as most of the leaves were still green.

The trail was well shaded, not too technical, and accessible for people of all ages. My wife was 6 months pregnant when we did this, and she used a trekking pole, which was very handy. But we also saw primary school kids climbing this with their parents without any aide.

Trail shoes would be beneficial but...

I have been in many parks in the world. Maruyama is one of the largest one. During the cherry blossom person, the park is packed with grilling people, who are tired of long winter and too much indoor/artificial light. It's a kind of escape into the nature, for a while. The park is lack of wild flowers, that why is missing probably some kind of freshness. Also the main problem is the large and aggressive crows, what are looking always for more food, even attacking weaker people, like women and children, trying to smuggle the bag with food from them. There are too many of them because the local government does not regulate their numbers, same as bears, who attack Hokkaido people in the upper mountain areas, but never in Maruyama park. Here are no bears, but so many crows. They are loud too, disturbing the enjoyment of being out...