What's a good 3-day itinerary for Sapporo?

Sapporo's grid layout is almost comically easy to read — numbered streets run north-south, numbered avenues run east-west, everything measured from the Odori–Soseigawa intersection at the city's center. You won't get lost. The subway has three color-coded lines, and a Kitaca IC card (buy one at New Chitose Airport when you land) works on all of them — but for three days you can walk most of it; the central district is flat, maybe four kilometers corner to corner. The real scheduling question is food, not sights. Sapporo is where miso ramen was born, where Genghis Khan grilled lamb became a citywide obsession, and where soup curry evolved into its own dish in the 1970s. Build each day around two good meals, fit the sights between them, and you'll cover everything that matters without the forced-march exhaustion that ruins most first visits.

Day 1 stays inside Chuo-ku on foot. Be at Nijo Market by 7 AM, when the stall owners are laying glistening uni onto warm rice and the morning air still carries the salt-and-brine smell of fresh crab. A uni-ikura don runs about ¥2,500 (around $16). Walk ten minutes north to Odori Park, the 1.5-kilometer green strip first laid out in 1869 as a firebreak. The TV Tower at its east end has a 90-meter observation deck (¥1,000) that gives you the whole grid at a glance — worth it on your first morning. Keep west to the Clock Tower, a white clapboard building from 1878 that looks like it strayed in from Vermont. Mind you, most visitors find it smaller than expected. See it, note it, keep walking. Lunch at Garaku near Odori — soup curry with a whole chicken leg in tomato broth, about ¥1,300, spice adjustable from 1 to 40. By evening, head south to Ramen Yokocho in Susukino — seventeen ramen shops in a narrow alley where steam fogs the windows year-round. The broth is thick, nearly chewy, sealed under a lard cap that keeps it scalding until your last spoonful.

Day 2 pushes east. The Sapporo Beer Museum sits in an 1890s red-brick former sugar factory in Kita-ku — the self-guided tour is free and takes about forty minutes, but the draw is the tasting hall, where three different Sapporo drafts cost ¥800. Go before noon; tour groups pack it after lunch. Next door, the Beer Garden serves Genghis Khan — thin-sliced lamb sizzling on a dome-shaped iron grill, the fat running into a moat of broth around the edges. The smoke will soak into your clothes. That's normal. After lunch, take the Toho subway line and a bus (about forty minutes total) to Moerenuma Park, a former waste-treatment site that sculptor Isamu Noguchi redesigned as a landscape artwork. The glass pyramid catches afternoon light in ways that photographs tend to flatten. It's a big park — allow ninety minutes. Head back to central Sapporo for dinner; Nemuro Hanamaru near Sapporo Station does conveyor-belt sushi with Hokkaido seafood — the uni plates run ¥300–600. Expect a thirty-minute queue.

Day 3 heads west and uphill. Take the Tozai line to Maruyama-Koen station and walk fifteen minutes through Maruyama Park — tall Hokkaido pines, cool even in June, birdsong louder than traffic. Hokkaido Shrine sits at the path's end, a Meiji-era Shinto complex where the gravel crunches underfoot and the air smells like cedar. From there, bus to Okurayama Ski Jump Stadium, first built in 1931 and rebuilt for the 1972 Winter Olympics. The chairlift to the top costs ¥1,000, and the view from the starting gate — looking straight down the slope toward the city laid flat below — tightens your stomach even as a spectator. The afternoon is deliberately lighter: walk the elm-lined paths of Hokkaido University's campus in Kita-ku, rest at the hotel, then queue at Daruma in Susukino for your last dinner. They've served Genghis Khan lamb here since 1954. The dome-grill smoke will follow you onto the plane.