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Hokkaido is the newest part of Japan
Hokkaido feels different because it is. Japan settled it in earnest only from the 1870s, displacing the indigenous Ainu, and it was laid out with American advice — which is why Sapporo has a numbered grid instead of the tangle of an older Japanese city, and why the roads are wide and the farms large. Dairy, wheat and potatoes matter more than rice. Winters are severe enough to have their own architecture, and the snow festival is built from it.