“Sapporo’s name was taken from Ainuic ‘sat poro pet’, which can be translated as the ‘dry, great river, a reference to the Toyohira River.

“The Ainu are the indigenous people of the lands surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, including Hokkaido Island, Northeast Honshu Island, Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula and Khabarovsk Krai, before the arrival of the Yamato Japanese and Russians.”