Obihiro and Monbetsu

Obihiro Racecourse: address and how to find it

Obihiro Racecourse sits in the city of Obihiro, in eastern Hokkaido. The official address is 9-1 Minami, Nishi-13-jo, Obihiro-shi, Hokkaido 080-0023 Japan². If you are coming in by train, the track is about 20 minutes from JR Obihiro Station on foot, or 8 minutes by taxi¹.

There is also a bus. From JR Obihiro Station, take the Tokachi Bus toward the Eigyosho (the Tokachi Bus Business Office) and get off at the Keibajo Mae bus stop, which is right in front of the racecourse. That ride takes about 10 minutes¹.

Obihiro is one of several tracks on Japan's northern main island. The others include:

• Mombetsu
• Iwamizawa
• Asahikawa
• Kitami
• Sapporo
• Hakodate

If you are traveling around Hokkaido you have more than one option within a few hours of each other².

The six tracks covered on this page: Obihiro, Monbetsu, Morioka, Mizusawa, Urawa and Funabashi

These six are all local government racecourses, which in Japan means they run under the local horse racing system rather than the Japan Racing Association. That matters for two practical reasons: the race days are set by each local body, and the tracks are generally smaller and easier to walk than the big JRA venues.

Here is where each one is and how to reach it.

A few notes on each.

Mombetsu is the northernmost of the group, up on the Okhotsk coast of Hokkaido. If you are driving from Sapporo or New Chitose, the route runs on the Doh-O Expressway and then the Hidaka Expressway, and you get off at either Mukawa IC or Hidaka-Furukawa IC⁵. There is no train station at the track itself, so a car or a race-day bus is the practical way in.

Morioka is the main track in Iwate Prefecture. On days when races are held, free shuttle buses run between the racecourse and JR Morioka Station and other locations, which saves you the taxi fare¹. By car it is about 20 minutes from JR Morioka Station and 25 minutes from the Tohoku Highway Morioka-Minami Interchange¹.

Mizusawa is also in Iwate, further south, at 1-2 Akudo, Anetai-cho, Mizusawa-shi, Iwate 023-0831². It is a smaller country track, and the two Iwate venues between them give the prefecture a full local racing calendar.

Urawa is the easiest of the six to reach from central Tokyo. It sits in Saitama City, the prefectural capital, close to Tokyo, in a neighborhood with residential areas right alongside it³. The track is a dirt course and races run left-handed³.

Funabashi is in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo, and is the most convenient of the group by train: 10 minutes on foot from JR Minami-Funabashi Station, or 5 minutes from Keisei Railway Funabashi Keibajo Station⁴. That Keisei station is named after the racecourse, so you cannot miss it.

How to play at the racecourse

The mechanics are the same at all six tracks. You buy a betting ticket before the race, then watch the race, then cash any winning ticket.

Step 1: Get in. At the JRA tracks there is a small entrance fee, 100 yen at Sapporo, Hakodate, Fukushima, Niigata and Kokura Racecourses⁶. Local tracks like the six on this page set their own arrangements, so check the gate on the day.

Step 2: Buy your ticket. You can buy betting tickets at the racecourses and at off-track betting facilities around the country⁷. At the track, you fill in a betting slip with the race number, the bet type, and your selection, then pay at the window or the machine. The minimum stake at Japanese tracks is small, so you can play a full card for a modest amount.

Step 3: Watch the race, then collect. Payout windows are open from the time the first race goes on sale until the payout for the final race closes⁸. So you do not have to rush to cash a winning ticket between races; you can wait until the end of the day.

Step 4: Know the bet types. The core set sold at Hokkaido tracks is win, place, bracket quinella, quinella, wide, 3-renfuku and 3-rentan⁹. Central racing adds the same family of bets plus WIN5, a multi-race bet that rolls several races into one ticket¹⁰. Kanazawa Racecourse, as a comparison, lists nine bet types in total¹¹.

If you want the full picture of how Japanese horse racing betting works, including the JRA tracks and their bigger race days, see Betting on Horse Racing in Japan and Japan's Big Horse Races: When They Run and How to Bet.

What you can win

The bet types decide what you can win, and the pool decides how much.

Win (tan-sho) pays if your horse finishes first. Place (fuku-sho) pays if your horse finishes in the top three, or top two in a small field, which makes it the safer option. Bracket quinella (waku-ren) and quinella (uma-ren) pay when two horses finish in the top two in either order. Wide pays when your two horses both finish in the top three, in any order, which is the most forgiving of the two-horse bets.

The 3-renfuku and 3-rentan bets are the big ones. 3-renfuku pays if your three horses finish in the top three in any order. 3-rentan pays only if they finish in the exact order you name. Those are the bets that produce the headline payouts, because the pools are large and the combinations are many.

Because these are pari-mutuel bets, the payout is not fixed when you buy. All the money on a given bet type goes into a pool, the track takes its share, and the rest is divided among the winning tickets. A long shot winning means fewer winning tickets and a bigger payout per ticket. A favorite winning means more winning tickets and a smaller payout.

One practical point: the payout windows stay open from the first race sale until the final race payout ends⁸, so you can collect everything at once on your way out.

Betting rules for visitors in Japan

The short version: visitors from abroad can bet at Japanese racecourses. Betting tickets can be purchased at the 10 JRA racecourses and at the off-track betting facilities around the country, and there is no rule restricting purchase to Japanese citizens⁷. You buy the same way a resident does.

What you need on the day is cash. Japanese tracks run on cash for betting tickets, and the machines and windows take yen. Bring small notes and coins, because you will be feeding machines repeatedly through the afternoon.

Off-track betting shops extend the reach of these tracks well beyond their home cities. The Iwate off-course betting shop in Morioka, for example, handles betting on Iwate Keiba races across 131 race days a year, plus races from other venues across 222 race days a year¹². That means even when your local track is dark, there is usually somewhere nearby to bet.

If you are based in a city without a track, the off-course network is the answer. See Off-Course Betting in Japan: WINS, J-PLACE and Ticket Shops for how those shops work.

For the wider picture of what gambling is and is not allowed in the country, including the forms that are off limits, see Can I Gamble in Japan?.

If you want to compare these local tracks with the big JRA venues, the Japan Racing Association page covers Tokyo, Nakayama, Kyoto, Hanshin and Sapporo Racecourses. For the Tokyo area's night racing scene, Oi Racecourse / Tokyo City Keiba is the local alternative to Urawa and Funabashi.