Es Con Field Hokkaido: Tickets, Access and What's Inside
2026. 9. 19.
There is a moment at Es Con Field Hokkaido that catches almost every first-timer. You are chest-deep in hot spring water with a folded towel on your head, and about forty meters away a pitcher is working out of a jam in front of a full house. Nobody else in the bath finds this remarkable.
Es Con Field Hokkaido is the home of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, a ¥60 billion ballpark that opened in March 2023 in Kitahiroshima, roughly half an hour from central Sapporo by train and shuttle bus. It seats 35,000 under a retractable roof. The same building also holds a natural hot spring, a hotel with rooms facing the field, a working brewery, and a food hall good enough to visit on a day with no game.
The stadium sits at the center of Hokkaido Ballpark F Village, a 32-hectare site of parks, shops, farms and restaurants that you can walk into for free on non-game days. That arrangement is new for Japanese baseball, where most clubs play inside city-center domes with nothing around them but train exits.
The roof is the headline piece of engineering. Its movable section spans 166 meters and opens or closes in 25 minutes, which lets the Fighters play under open Hokkaido sky in July and under cover in April, when snow still sits in the hills. A 70-meter glass wall behind the outfield keeps daylight in the bowl even when the roof is shut.
Behind left field stands Tower 11, a five-story building named for the uniform number worn by both Yu Darvish and Shohei Ohtani during their Fighters years. The onsen, the hotel, and a bar all sit inside it. The playing field runs 97 meters down the left-field line, 121 meters to center, and 99 meters to the right.
취향에 맞게 커스터마이징할 수 있는 일본 여행 일정을 비용 포함해서 만들어 드립니다.
The ballpark is in Kitahiroshima, one stop out of the Sapporo commuter belt on the JR Chitose Line. There is no single direct route, so pick the one that suits where you are staying.
From Sapporo Station: take a Rapid Airport train to Kita-Hiroshima Station, about 17 minutes for ¥540, then walk roughly 19 minutes or take the shuttle bus for ¥200.
From Shin-Sapporo Station: shuttle buses run straight to the ballpark in about 25 minutes for ¥600 each way.
From New Chitose Airport: shuttle buses run on game days, which makes a game an easy first or last stop on a Hokkaido trip.
Give yourself more time than the timetable suggests. Shuttle lines build quickly before first pitch and again in the hour after the final out, and the walk from Kita-Hiroshima Station is pleasant in August and cold in April.
Rail access is about to get simpler. Kitahiroshima City and JR Hokkaido have named the new Chitose Line station beside the ballpark F Village Station, with the station number H06-1. Construction is under way, and no opening date has been announced.
Seating is organized into three tiers. FIELD LEVEL sits closest to the action and includes the Dugout Club and bullpen seats. MAIN LEVEL covers the main infield and the outfield reserved sections. STAR LEVEL is the upper ring, which holds the cheapest reserved seats plus the home and visitor cheering areas.
Prices move with the opponent and the day of the week rather than sitting at a fixed rate. The same seat costs more for a weekend game against the Giants than for a Tuesday night in May. Across the stadium, reserved seats generally run from a couple of thousand yen in the upper deck to five figures for club seating. Children aged 4 through sixth grade pay about half the adult price for MAIN and STAR stand seats, capped at ¥1,000.
The ES CON FIELD HOKKAIDO Admission Ticket is a great value option for anyone looking to experience a Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters home game without an assigned seat.
There is a cheaper way in. The admission ticket gets you into the concourse without a seat, which is enough if you plan to eat your way around the building and watch from the standing counters that ring the field. Weekday night games after 7 pm knock ¥300 off that price. If you want to lock one in before you fly, a concourse admission ticket is the simplest thing to book from overseas.
One rule catches people out. An admission ticket does not entitle you to sit in an empty seat, and staff enforce it.
For a first visit, the MAIN LEVEL infield seats on the first or third base side give you the best balance of price and view, with the concourse food within easy reach behind you.
If you came for the noise, buy into the STAR LEVEL home support area instead. That is where the drums, trumpets, and team songs come from, and the crowd there stands for most of the game. Visiting fans get their own section, and sitting in the wrong one is the fastest way to feel out of place. If this is your first Japanese game anywhere, read how a Japanese baseball game works before you choose.
The outfield seats are cheap, loud and a good time. The Dugout Club and bullpen seats put you at field level for a premium. Tower 11 has its own bar seating above left field for people who would rather watch with a drink and a table.
This is the reason a lot of travelers come. tower eleven onsen & sauna is a natural hot spring and sauna built into the stadium, and its semi-outdoor swimsuit zone looks straight onto the field.
On a non-game day, general admission to the bath is ¥2,500, and the facility runs from 11:00 to 21:00. Game-day pricing climbs. General game-day bathing starts around ¥4,000, and the reserved field-view options run higher: Totonoe Terrace seats from roughly ¥8,000, the two-person Yorisoi seats from about ¥10,000, and the four-person Totonoe Suite Skybox from about ¥48,000. A bath towel and hand towel come with the ticket.
Bring a swimsuit. The field-view zone requires one, rentals are limited, and that zone is the part everyone comes for. Children from age 4 through elementary school pay half, and under-4s are free. Game-day slots sell out well ahead, so a non-game-day onsen ticket is often the easier way to see it. The bath is also far quieter with no crowd in the building.
Tower 11 also has a hotel, the first in Japanese pro baseball with rooms that look onto the playing field. It is small, with twelve rooms sleeping 54 guests in total, and it operates year-round rather than only during the season. Room rates include access to the onsen downstairs.
Rooms release well in advance and go quickly for weekend games. Treat this as something you plan a trip around rather than something you add at the last minute.
Hokkaido takes food seriously, and the stadium leans on that. The concourse runs to dozens of outlets serving seafood rice bowls, Sapporo miso ramen, soup curry, and jingisukan lamb barbecue. Prices sit closer to a city food hall than to a stadium markup.
Two spots stand out. Sorato Shiba by Yona Yona Ale is a brewpub with its own brewing tanks and a view over the field, which makes it the rare ballpark bar people visit on days with no game. Nanatsuboshi Yokocho is an alley-style row of ramen counters inside the concourse, and it has drawn shops that rank in the top 100 on Tabelog, Japan's largest restaurant review site.
Two rules matter before you arrive. The building is completely cashless and takes credit cards, IC cards, and QR payments only. Outside food and drink are not allowed either, including sealed plastic bottles.
ES CON FIELD HOKKAIDO is home to one of Japan’s most unique wellness experiences. With a non-game day ticket to tower eleven onsen and sauna, you receive full-day access to the natural hot spring, sauna, cold bath, and indoor bar zone in a calm, uncrowded setting.
On non-game days, the grounds are free to walk into, which turns the site into an ordinary Sapporo day trip. The village holds a large children's playground, a dog park, a bakery and restaurant, an adventure park and the Fighters flagship store. Kubota Agri Front, a working farm and food-technology exhibit, is more interesting than it sounds.
None of this is a reason to skip a game, but it does mean a family can spend half a day here without anyone throwing a pitch. It fits neatly into an eight-day Hokkaido road trip between Sapporo and Otaru.
The stadium runs guided tours year-round, including on non-game days and before night games, led by staff from the Fighters Girls team.
The Premium Tour costs ¥3,500 on weekdays and ¥4,500 on weekends and public holidays, with children at ¥1,000. It runs about 60 minutes and covers the home clubhouse area, the dugout, the bullpen, the interview room, and the Diamond Club seats. The Basic Tour costs ¥1,800 on weekdays and ¥2,300 on weekends, also ¥1,000 for children, and covers the same route over about 50 minutes without the home team areas. A shorter Ground Walk is ¥1,500 for adults and ¥500 for children.
Book ahead through the team's ticketing site. Weekend premium slots go first.
The NPB regular season runs from late March into the fall, and the Fighters play around 70 home dates inside that window. In 2026, the league calendar ran from March 27 through November 1, followed by the Climax Series and the Japan Series.
July and August are the sweet spot. Hokkaido summers hold in the mid-70s Fahrenheit while the rest of Japan sits in the humid 90s, the roof opens for most games, and Sapporo is at its best for the days either side. April games are cold enough that the roof usually stays shut, which is a fine backup rather than a disappointment.
Outside the season, the building does not close. Stadium tours, the onsen, the hotel, and the F Village shops all run through the Hokkaido winter. That is worth knowing if you are in Sapporo for the Snow Festival in February.
Plan on arriving 60 to 90 minutes before first pitch. Gates open well ahead of the game, the food lines at the popular counters are long by the time the lineups are announced, and the building itself takes a while to walk.
Set up a payment method before you leave your hotel. A credit card works, and so does a Suica or Kitaca IC card topped up at any station. There is no cash backup anywhere inside, including the merchandise store.
Night games generally end between 21:30 and 22:00, and the shuttle queue afterward is the one genuinely slow part of the evening. If you are staying in central Sapporo, the last trains back from Kita-Hiroshima run late enough that you do not need to leave early, but budget an hour from the final out to your hotel door.
Yes, and not only for baseball fans. A game here costs less than a comparable ticket back home, the food is genuinely good, and the crowd keeps up a level of organized noise that surprises most first-time visitors. Our piece on how the atmosphere compares to MLB covers the chanting, the beer vendors, and the seventh inning.
Check the Fighters' home schedule before you set your Sapporo dates, book the onsen the moment you know them, and leave the whole afternoon free. This is not a two-hour stop.
