Sapporo Snow Festival

At the beginning of February, we had another long weekend. And what better way to spend it than to escape the massive snow and freezing cold...and go to MORE SNOW AND COLD?! Yes it doesn't seem to make sense, if it wasn't for the world famous annual Sapporo Snow Festival that was happening at the time.

Sapporo is in the northern most part of Japan, Hokkaido - an island on its own. It is the largest city above Tokyo and it was a really nice city at that. I would love to go back again, in summer when it is warmer!

The snow festival was amazing! I really enjoyed it. A large group of about 20-25 Yamagata JETs went on a big trip. The majority took an extra day off and went up a day earlier to Snowboard and Ski. Me and three others went a day later. We took a plane from Sendai (to the east of Yamagata). I drove over to the airport and we were really shocked to see the difference in weather. Over on the other side of Japan it was about 6/7 degrees Celsius with hardly any snow, whilst in Yamagata temperatures were in the minuses and we were almost drowning in the snow! We were not best pleased at that point in time with where the JET programme had placed us!

The weather up in Sapporo was really nice. A bright clear blue sky all the time. It was rather cold, but not a great deal different to Yamagata I thought. The nice thing about our stay in Sapporo was that our group of four who came a day late, had to stay in a slightly more expensive hotel (only ¥2000 per night difference) but the hotel was really nice! People waiting on us to carry bags, really nice bars in the hotel and very comfortable rooms with English CNN on the TV! (Apart from the Internet and DVDs - I haven't seen proper English speaking TV since I got here!)

Considering I'd felt like I'd had a bit of a rubbish week beforehand, this short break was just what I needed!

At the Sapporo Snow Festival, which has been going annually for 59 years, they create giant snow and ice sculptures. The Japan Army is called in to help shift tons of snow and pack it together for sculptists to start creating amazing snow models! They are really unbelievable!

For once, Sapporo is a nicely planned, nicely arranged city (quite new I guess) - so it has a massive boulevard in the middle of the city and on each section a massive sculpture is erected, with smaller sculptures on show on either sides of the streets. They also have things like food fairs to try the local dishes (tasty Ramen and crab are very well known up in Sapporo).

The Sapporo Railway Station, made completely of ice!

The Egypt display was one of the most spectacular, just look at how high the sculpture is in relation to the people at the bottom, and the relative height of the buildings too!

I enjoy some very nice warming Sapporo Ramen.

A Japanese Castle

On the first night we went to the Sapporo Beer Garden, and had a nice party with all the other JETs who had come up. Then we all went to a little club where there were loads of other JETs from all over the country - I even bumped into quite a few UK JETs I either met on the plane to Japan or as far as the London orientation!

The Sapporo Brewary, and an illuminated Snow Igloo - Just to the right of the photo there are some steps made of snow, leading up to a snow slide! Snow galore!

The next day, we went to Susukino - apparently the shadiest part of Sapporo with quite a reputation for being one of the seediest places in a city outside of Tokyo! It wasn't dangerous though and they have a very impressive ice sculpture display in that part of the city. We did a bit of karaoke and went to some cool bars and had some 'Atsukan' - or 'Hot Saké' - the best thing to have in a place as cold as Hokkaido in winter!

Mmmm! A Bailey's bottle made completely of ice in Susukino. The building (again made of ice) was seeling hot Baileys! Not that I'm a big fan of Baileys but it was quite a nice treat in the cold! There was another ice building a bit further down the road selling champagne, but it closed early.

Enjoying some warm saké!