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Published: April 24th 2009
Dancing
A snow sculpture of THe Hakodate Magistrate's Office with live music on a stage in front. Who doesn’t love festivals? Seriously, you’d have to be quite a grinch not to. I love festivals. The fun, food, events and (in this case) giant snow sculptures the size of buildings. Yuki Matsuri or better known in the western world as the Sapporo Snow Festival is an event of international caliber. Over 2 million tourists flock to this frozen northern Japanese city from February 5 through 11 every year. When I moved to Japan I decided at one point I would be one of those 2 million + tourists.
We all flew to Sapporo on Sunday, Alexa, Lauren, Katie, Simon and I. As the plane taxied onto the runway it was obvious that this was definitely a snowy city. Outside the airport, outside the train and on our walk to the hotel snow was falling from and blanketing everything (us included) in soft white powder. The snow didn’t deter us from heading out into the darkening city after we dropped our luggage off. Odori Koen (Park) ,which is the main site of the festival, is where we headed. Odori Koen runs almost the full length of downtown Sapporo and is divided into 12 sections (called chromes). It starts at
the Sapporo TV tower and ends at Shiryokan, the former Sapporo Court of Appeals. It was really snowing and frezzing, but we still had a blast as we explored the first four chromes of the park. Then hunger and the blizzard finally made us grab a taxi to meet up with some other friends of mine from Kansai for an all you can eat and drink crab buffet. Sooooo Yummmy!!!! After dinner the girls headed out for entertainment, but Simon and I turned in.
The next morning Simon and I got up early (the girls needed a few more hours of recuperation). We went on a stroll around the area. We looked at a few snowy temples, the ice sculptures along susukino dori, ate some famous Sapporo Ramen in “Ramen Alley”, rode a ferris wheel, visited chromes 5 - 12 of Odori Park and tried our hand at cross country skiing. Quite a busy day! That evening we viewed the ice sculptures along susukino dori again all lit up for night.
Tuesday we all went together to Tsudome Site. This site was more of an activity site. We rode toobs down a giant ice slide, stood in line
for ice rafting and rode a river raft pulled by a snow mobile around. Then we went into the convention center and ate some ghenis khan and caramel. The last thing we did was build our own Japanese style snowmen before heading back to our hotel. That evening I stayed in with the girls and ate complimentary curry and rice at the hotel then met up with Simon to have dessert and go up the TV tower to view Odori Koen all lit up at night.
Wednesday was our last day and Simon and I went to the Sapporo Beer Factory Museum in the morning. We learned a bit of the brewing process, sampled some of the beer and I sampled two flavors of ice cream. Lavender ice cream and ika (squid) ice cream. Both were really delicious. ^_^ After the museum we grabbed our luggage from the hotel desk and made the journey back to Shikoku and home.
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Jo Trouble
Jo McCarthy
One trip not to miss!
This was the one trip I wanted to make sure I did while I was in Japan this time, so I went the first year (2 years ago)! The snowboarding is great too, and I highly recommend the Hokkaido Historical Village if you get a chance to go back - better with the snow :-)