February 5-7, 2010
*Warning- Photo Overload*
The 60th Snow Festival (2009): 2.080.000 visitors
The 59th Snow Festival (2008): 2.159.000 visitors
The 58th Snow Festival (2007): 2.101.000 visitors
The 57th Snow Festival (2006): 1.985.000 visitors
The 56th Snow Festival (2005): 2.191.000 visitors
Our trip began Friday Evening. Eric worked his normal day on Friday, which happens to be his busy day at work, then after work he attended a retirement party for the principle of his school as well as another school employee. (The principle is also a Shinto Priest and is retiring to run the family shrine). Eric left the Enkai early with his supervisor Kobayashi Sensei so we could start our journey. Kobayashi was kind enough to drive us to the train station in our town so that we would not have to take an 800 yen taxi. It had been snowing heavily all day and about an hour before it was time for us to head out a blizzard rolled in :/ When we got to the train station there was a bus outside, which often means that the trains may be stopped and that they plan to use a bus instead. Kobayashi asked around and determined that our train would be very late, and possibly cancelled so he offered to drive us to a bigger train station with multiple lines that is near his home so we gratefully accepted his kind offer although we felt bad because it meant he would not return the retirement party for the dinner that he had already paid for. When we got to the 2nd station we realized that if that train was able to make it, it would be 30-40 minutes late which would mean we would miss our transfer, so Kobayashi again offered to drive us to another train station that was on the line we needed to transfer to. He told us the station was only about 10 minutes away so we accepted, as we would otherwise miss our train. I don't know if he thought the station was closer than it was, or that the weather was so terrible it really just took that much longer, or if he knew and didn't want us to feel bad but the station was more like an hour away. When we got to that tiny little station in the middle of the rice fields there were no attendants at the station and the electronic sign said that they were extreme delays. Kobayashi didn't give us a choice this time but he told us he was driving us to Aomori city otherwise we would miss our train to Sapporo and therefore miss out on experiencing the festival. And so he drove us to Aomori City in the middle of a blizzard. We were only able to drive about 10-20 km/h the whole way, and we stopped several times when there was no visibility. All in all it took us about 3 1/2 hours to get to Aomori city, fortunately the weather in Aomori was much better and our over night express train to Sapporo was on time and we made it! We were extremely thankful that Kobayashi spent his Friday night driving in a blizzard to get us on our way, but we felt so bad, especially knowing that he was getting back in the car to make the drive home. Lesson learned (again) traveling in Northern Japan in the Winter is extremely unpredictable and back up plans, spare time, and patience are a must!!
Our train left Aomori City around 10:30 pm and we arrived in Sapporo at 6:30 am. The train car we were in was rather old so we were a little cramped and I'm convinced they were trying to cook us... so it was difficult to sleep but we got enough to make it through the day! I was just thankful that I slept the whole way through the Seikan Tunnel! The Tunnel is 53.85 km (33.4 miles) long and runs under the ocean between Honshu (the main island of Japan where we live) and Hokkaido (the Northern island). The Seikan Tunnel is both the longest traffic tunnel in the world and the longest underwater tunnel in the world. Those two things combined with the fact that Japan has at least one earthquake every day did not make me very excited for this portion of the journey. Even though I know the technology behind the tunnel is truly incredible, I was still nervous. There is a first time for everything and we all know that I don't have the best of luck! But it was just fine, and I slept through the whole tunnel!
When we first arrived in Sapporo there was not much of anything open so we took a quick walk around the HUGE train station and scoped out some destinations. We stopped into a 7-Eleven in search of a drink being sold in America called Slow Cow, it is supposedly the opposite of Red Bull, and although our search was not successful we did find a particularly odd item. Pringles, much like Pepsi and Kit-Kat, release several unique flavors sold in Japan only. The most recent one.... the Grand Canyon specialty of French Fries and Ketchup?!?!? Now, I know the Grand Canyon is famous for a few things, but I was definitely unaware of this french fry phenomenon... and I'm pretty sure someone in marketing made it up! Also, please notice the picture on the can... isn't that Sedona and not the Grand Canyon?? 
On our morning stroll we also found a 24 hour McDonald's where we enjoyed a delicious familiar breakfast :) Then we had the ultimate treat... Starbucks :) and once we were loaded with food and caffeine we were ready for our day of embracing the cold to enjoy what was expected to be an awesome festival! 
We then took the subway to the outer portion of Sapporo to catch the shuttle bus to the Tsudome site, the only portion of the festival not in the main part of town. We were there right before it opened at 8:30 am and it was so fun to see all of the little Japanese children bundled up like marshmallows and jumping around so excited to get in. What we didn't realize before we got to this site was that it was really meant for children, but fortunately Eric and I little kids at heart, so we had fun too! We enjoyed looking at all of the unique sculptures and most of all, the giant snow slide!! Yes we waited in line to ride it, and yes it was AWESOME! We rode in an inner tube down it and I spun in circles the whole way! 
A family of turtles. 
"Ice Cube"!
"The chicken and the egg"
"The Thinker"
After enjoying the Tsudome site we then took the shuttle bus back to the subway, back to Sapporo Station where we took a cab to the Sapporo Brewery for lunch. This lunch was a planned highlight of the day. Sapporo is famous for it's BBQ Lamb (Ghengis Khan) and Eric really wanted to experience it in our one day there so I did some research and found out that the brewery has all you can eat Ghengis Khan and that it is supposedly the best in town. I also found out that they have a limited number of people they can serve at one time and knowing that the Japanese love to show up for these kinds of things on tour buses, I made sure we were there 20 minutes before they opened!
The brewery itself was really beautiful, the building that the Beer Garden is in was originally Sapporo's City Hall and is made of red brick. The brewery people can tour and sample beer at is the original brewery but is not used for mass production anymore, they have built a more modern brewery out of the city. After a quick stroll through the actual garden, we made our way inside and were some of the first people seated, we ordered our all you can eat lunch and they started bringing out the meat!! 
I must say that having a meal that involves a bbq inside your table in the middle of a day being spent outdoors in the snow was a great plan! We not only got really full of delicious protein but we also warmed up quite well! 
I meant to take a picture of Eric grilling the meat... but I was too busy eating so I forgot. . . oops!
After lunch we took a cab to Odori Park which is where the main portion of the festival was happening. We spent several hours walking through the park enjoying the incredible sculptures. The park is a little over 1 mile long and it was set up so you can only walk one direction so to see everything you walk close to 3 miles, it was worth every step. We did learn that although our snow boots do a great job of keeping our feet dry, they don't do much in the way of comfort. Here are some of the sculptures from Odori Park.
Snoopy
My dear friend George!!
2 of the XXI Winter Olympic mascots.
A duck
Michael Jackson
A family on a sled
A White Bear :)
A Wave
A Flower
"Imagine"
Although these sculptures are cute, beautiful, and some unique. . .you might find yourself questioning if it would be worth traveling great lengths or even flying to Japan to see it, and that's perfectly ok because, that wasn't the good stuff! This is what makes the festival world famous and what is worth traveling to see. . .
Look at the size of the sculpture compared the people standing on the stage portion, and in comparisson to the size of the city buildings near by. It is truly massive and I don't think it can be grasped from a picture. I had seen many pictures before going and I knew it would be big. . . but I never imagined that it would be this HUGE! This particular sculpture was commisioned by the local Zoo. Here are close up shots of sections of the sculpture so you can appreciate the detail! Can you imagine doing this much work knowing that 7 days after it's completed it would be broken into sections, driven out of the city and crushed?! They have to destroy them to prevent flooding and road damage from when it melts!
Now I think we can all agree that this is worth traveling for, and it's truly beautiful and takes A LOT of talent to produce something like this. Remeber, it's made entirely of compressed snow!
This is a replica of Sapporo's City Hall building, it is made of ice, rather than snow. It had started to snow so there was snow on the roof top and the "sidewalks" so it looked quite accurate! The ice sculptures were made using power tools as well as hand tools.
This building was by far the largest, it was absolutely stupendous!!
Although this was definitely not the largest it was the most impressive! This is a replica of a Temple in Southern Nada and the detail is absolutely incredible!!
From Odori park we caught a cab to Susukino which is an area of Sapporo known for it's nightlife, during Yuki Matsuri it is known for it's dramatic ice sculptures. The scupltures here were very beautiful but were also made using power tools. I prefered the snow sculptures done with hand tools.
This is the Emporer and his Wife.
An Owl.
A building with fish frozen inside the blocks.
An Airplane made of ice.
A car made of ice.
As you can see it was starting to snow, we were fortunate that the weather was pretty clear most of the day but it rapidly started snowing much harder and it suddenly was impossible to enjoy being outdoors so we walked to the subway station and headed back to the Sapporo Station which has a giant shopping mall inside. We entertained ourselves indoors for a bit and then we had dinner at an wonderful Chinease restaraunt. It was great to be indoors and to enjoy a type of food we don't have at home. We also found the foreign foods store, look at their selection of cheeses! We wished the train wasn't so hot so we could take some home with us. . . and then we looked at the prices, 987 yen for 10 pieces of Sargento string cheese!!!
We wanted to go to the observation deck in the Sapporo Tower but by the time the weather cleared up it was dark. We made our way back out to Odori Park (at this point we were really wishing we had purchased a day pass for the subway! Lesson learned, if you are entertaining yourselves for an entire day in a city with great public transportation, just buy the day pass.) At night the large sculptures are illuminated and it makes everything seem quite magical. As we strolled through the park I couldn't help but imagine that it is what Central Park at Christmas feels like. There were several concerts happening on the various stages and we stopped at each for a few minutes. My favorite was of course the music and lights show on the Disney sculpture, it gave me a small Disney fix so now I can hold out on going to Tokyo Disney a little longer... but not too much longer. The park was so beautiful at night! The Susukino site (where the ice sculptures were) is also illuminated at night but we skipped out on going back there because the street are lined with bars and it was Saturday night and we were cold and tired. Here are photos from Odori Park at night :)
Unfortunately our day in Sapporo was coming to a close and it was time to get back to the train station to catch our return train home.
We were quite happy when boarded the train though because it wasn't full, the train car this time was much newer, the seats were almost as large as first class airplane seats, they reclined a lot and the train wasn't quite as hot! We were both able to sleep for portions of the ride home and all of our connections worked out perfectly, no weather delays. When we got back to our town and got in the cab the heavy snow started, it was perfect timing! We had a truly fantastic weekend filled with lots of special treats! We were so thankful for our early birthday present from Glenn and Patti (Mom and Dad Malloff)!!
*Warning- Photo Overload*
Sapporo Yuki Matsuri is a festival that I had actually first learned about while living in the States, I can't remember if I read about it in an airplane magazine or if I watched a special about on the Travel Channel, either are quite possible. I thought it sounded very interesting and I really wanted to see it but couldn't imagine traveling to Japan in the winter just for a festival. Once I realized that we were moving a few hours train ride away I got very excited and hoped we could go, so this weekend was very special to me and I have been really looking forward to it and had lots of fun planning out our day!
First- The Facts: The first Sapporo Snow Festival was held in Odori Park in 1950, with
only six snow statues made by local high school students. Since then the Snow Festival has constantly expanded, gaining worldwide recognition.
only six snow statues made by local high school students. Since then the Snow Festival has constantly expanded, gaining worldwide recognition.In 1955, five years after the first Snow Festival, the Self Defense Force joined in and built the very first massive snow sculpture, for which the Snow Festival has become famous.
Sapporo hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 1972, and the Snow Festival was largely acknowledged around the world through international media. In 1974, the International Snow Sculpture Contest started as part of the Snow Festival. Many countries from overseas, including the ones that never receive snow, compete the Contest every year.
The Snow Festival has developed its international aspect year by year. Snow statues with motifs of places around the world, including Shenyang (China), Alberta (province in Canada), Munich (Germany), Portland (Oregon, U.S.A.), each of which has a close relationship with Sapporo, were made.
The Sapporo Snow Festival has grown from the humble beginnings to become the biggest and most well-known of Hokkaido's winter events and a snow festival of international caliber.The 60th Snow Festival (2009): 2.080.000 visitors
The 59th Snow Festival (2008): 2.159.000 visitors
The 58th Snow Festival (2007): 2.101.000 visitors
The 57th Snow Festival (2006): 1.985.000 visitors
The 56th Snow Festival (2005): 2.191.000 visitors
Our trip began Friday Evening. Eric worked his normal day on Friday, which happens to be his busy day at work, then after work he attended a retirement party for the principle of his school as well as another school employee. (The principle is also a Shinto Priest and is retiring to run the family shrine). Eric left the Enkai early with his supervisor Kobayashi Sensei so we could start our journey. Kobayashi was kind enough to drive us to the train station in our town so that we would not have to take an 800 yen taxi. It had been snowing heavily all day and about an hour before it was time for us to head out a blizzard rolled in :/ When we got to the train station there was a bus outside, which often means that the trains may be stopped and that they plan to use a bus instead. Kobayashi asked around and determined that our train would be very late, and possibly cancelled so he offered to drive us to a bigger train station with multiple lines that is near his home so we gratefully accepted his kind offer although we felt bad because it meant he would not return the retirement party for the dinner that he had already paid for. When we got to the 2nd station we realized that if that train was able to make it, it would be 30-40 minutes late which would mean we would miss our transfer, so Kobayashi again offered to drive us to another train station that was on the line we needed to transfer to. He told us the station was only about 10 minutes away so we accepted, as we would otherwise miss our train. I don't know if he thought the station was closer than it was, or that the weather was so terrible it really just took that much longer, or if he knew and didn't want us to feel bad but the station was more like an hour away. When we got to that tiny little station in the middle of the rice fields there were no attendants at the station and the electronic sign said that they were extreme delays. Kobayashi didn't give us a choice this time but he told us he was driving us to Aomori city otherwise we would miss our train to Sapporo and therefore miss out on experiencing the festival. And so he drove us to Aomori City in the middle of a blizzard. We were only able to drive about 10-20 km/h the whole way, and we stopped several times when there was no visibility. All in all it took us about 3 1/2 hours to get to Aomori city, fortunately the weather in Aomori was much better and our over night express train to Sapporo was on time and we made it! We were extremely thankful that Kobayashi spent his Friday night driving in a blizzard to get us on our way, but we felt so bad, especially knowing that he was getting back in the car to make the drive home. Lesson learned (again) traveling in Northern Japan in the Winter is extremely unpredictable and back up plans, spare time, and patience are a must!!
Our train left Aomori City around 10:30 pm and we arrived in Sapporo at 6:30 am. The train car we were in was rather old so we were a little cramped and I'm convinced they were trying to cook us... so it was difficult to sleep but we got enough to make it through the day! I was just thankful that I slept the whole way through the Seikan Tunnel! The Tunnel is 53.85 km (33.4 miles) long and runs under the ocean between Honshu (the main island of Japan where we live) and Hokkaido (the Northern island). The Seikan Tunnel is both the longest traffic tunnel in the world and the longest underwater tunnel in the world. Those two things combined with the fact that Japan has at least one earthquake every day did not make me very excited for this portion of the journey. Even though I know the technology behind the tunnel is truly incredible, I was still nervous. There is a first time for everything and we all know that I don't have the best of luck! But it was just fine, and I slept through the whole tunnel!
When we first arrived in Sapporo there was not much of anything open so we took a quick walk around the HUGE train station and scoped out some destinations. We stopped into a 7-Eleven in search of a drink being sold in America called Slow Cow, it is supposedly the opposite of Red Bull, and although our search was not successful we did find a particularly odd item. Pringles, much like Pepsi and Kit-Kat, release several unique flavors sold in Japan only. The most recent one.... the Grand Canyon specialty of French Fries and Ketchup?!?!? Now, I know the Grand Canyon is famous for a few things, but I was definitely unaware of this french fry phenomenon... and I'm pretty sure someone in marketing made it up! Also, please notice the picture on the can... isn't that Sedona and not the Grand Canyon?? 
On our morning stroll we also found a 24 hour McDonald's where we enjoyed a delicious familiar breakfast :) Then we had the ultimate treat... Starbucks :) and once we were loaded with food and caffeine we were ready for our day of embracing the cold to enjoy what was expected to be an awesome festival! 
We then took the subway to the outer portion of Sapporo to catch the shuttle bus to the Tsudome site, the only portion of the festival not in the main part of town. We were there right before it opened at 8:30 am and it was so fun to see all of the little Japanese children bundled up like marshmallows and jumping around so excited to get in. What we didn't realize before we got to this site was that it was really meant for children, but fortunately Eric and I little kids at heart, so we had fun too! We enjoyed looking at all of the unique sculptures and most of all, the giant snow slide!! Yes we waited in line to ride it, and yes it was AWESOME! We rode in an inner tube down it and I spun in circles the whole way! 
A family of turtles. 
"Ice Cube"!
"The chicken and the egg"
"The Thinker"After enjoying the Tsudome site we then took the shuttle bus back to the subway, back to Sapporo Station where we took a cab to the Sapporo Brewery for lunch. This lunch was a planned highlight of the day. Sapporo is famous for it's BBQ Lamb (Ghengis Khan) and Eric really wanted to experience it in our one day there so I did some research and found out that the brewery has all you can eat Ghengis Khan and that it is supposedly the best in town. I also found out that they have a limited number of people they can serve at one time and knowing that the Japanese love to show up for these kinds of things on tour buses, I made sure we were there 20 minutes before they opened!
The brewery itself was really beautiful, the building that the Beer Garden is in was originally Sapporo's City Hall and is made of red brick. The brewery people can tour and sample beer at is the original brewery but is not used for mass production anymore, they have built a more modern brewery out of the city. After a quick stroll through the actual garden, we made our way inside and were some of the first people seated, we ordered our all you can eat lunch and they started bringing out the meat!! 
I must say that having a meal that involves a bbq inside your table in the middle of a day being spent outdoors in the snow was a great plan! We not only got really full of delicious protein but we also warmed up quite well! 
I meant to take a picture of Eric grilling the meat... but I was too busy eating so I forgot. . . oops!After lunch we took a cab to Odori Park which is where the main portion of the festival was happening. We spent several hours walking through the park enjoying the incredible sculptures. The park is a little over 1 mile long and it was set up so you can only walk one direction so to see everything you walk close to 3 miles, it was worth every step. We did learn that although our snow boots do a great job of keeping our feet dry, they don't do much in the way of comfort. Here are some of the sculptures from Odori Park.
Snoopy
My dear friend George!!
2 of the XXI Winter Olympic mascots.
A duck
Michael Jackson
A family on a sled
A White Bear :)
A Wave
A Flower
"Imagine"Although these sculptures are cute, beautiful, and some unique. . .you might find yourself questioning if it would be worth traveling great lengths or even flying to Japan to see it, and that's perfectly ok because, that wasn't the good stuff! This is what makes the festival world famous and what is worth traveling to see. . .
Look at the size of the sculpture compared the people standing on the stage portion, and in comparisson to the size of the city buildings near by. It is truly massive and I don't think it can be grasped from a picture. I had seen many pictures before going and I knew it would be big. . . but I never imagined that it would be this HUGE! This particular sculpture was commisioned by the local Zoo. Here are close up shots of sections of the sculpture so you can appreciate the detail! Can you imagine doing this much work knowing that 7 days after it's completed it would be broken into sections, driven out of the city and crushed?! They have to destroy them to prevent flooding and road damage from when it melts!
Now I think we can all agree that this is worth traveling for, and it's truly beautiful and takes A LOT of talent to produce something like this. Remeber, it's made entirely of compressed snow!
This is a replica of Sapporo's City Hall building, it is made of ice, rather than snow. It had started to snow so there was snow on the roof top and the "sidewalks" so it looked quite accurate! The ice sculptures were made using power tools as well as hand tools.
This building was by far the largest, it was absolutely stupendous!!
Although this was definitely not the largest it was the most impressive! This is a replica of a Temple in Southern Nada and the detail is absolutely incredible!!From Odori park we caught a cab to Susukino which is an area of Sapporo known for it's nightlife, during Yuki Matsuri it is known for it's dramatic ice sculptures. The scupltures here were very beautiful but were also made using power tools. I prefered the snow sculptures done with hand tools.
This is the Emporer and his Wife.
An Owl.
A building with fish frozen inside the blocks.
An Airplane made of ice.
A car made of ice.As you can see it was starting to snow, we were fortunate that the weather was pretty clear most of the day but it rapidly started snowing much harder and it suddenly was impossible to enjoy being outdoors so we walked to the subway station and headed back to the Sapporo Station which has a giant shopping mall inside. We entertained ourselves indoors for a bit and then we had dinner at an wonderful Chinease restaraunt. It was great to be indoors and to enjoy a type of food we don't have at home. We also found the foreign foods store, look at their selection of cheeses! We wished the train wasn't so hot so we could take some home with us. . . and then we looked at the prices, 987 yen for 10 pieces of Sargento string cheese!!!
We wanted to go to the observation deck in the Sapporo Tower but by the time the weather cleared up it was dark. We made our way back out to Odori Park (at this point we were really wishing we had purchased a day pass for the subway! Lesson learned, if you are entertaining yourselves for an entire day in a city with great public transportation, just buy the day pass.) At night the large sculptures are illuminated and it makes everything seem quite magical. As we strolled through the park I couldn't help but imagine that it is what Central Park at Christmas feels like. There were several concerts happening on the various stages and we stopped at each for a few minutes. My favorite was of course the music and lights show on the Disney sculpture, it gave me a small Disney fix so now I can hold out on going to Tokyo Disney a little longer... but not too much longer. The park was so beautiful at night! The Susukino site (where the ice sculptures were) is also illuminated at night but we skipped out on going back there because the street are lined with bars and it was Saturday night and we were cold and tired. Here are photos from Odori Park at night :)
Unfortunately our day in Sapporo was coming to a close and it was time to get back to the train station to catch our return train home.
We were quite happy when boarded the train though because it wasn't full, the train car this time was much newer, the seats were almost as large as first class airplane seats, they reclined a lot and the train wasn't quite as hot! We were both able to sleep for portions of the ride home and all of our connections worked out perfectly, no weather delays. When we got back to our town and got in the cab the heavy snow started, it was perfect timing! We had a truly fantastic weekend filled with lots of special treats! We were so thankful for our early birthday present from Glenn and Patti (Mom and Dad Malloff)!!
Wow, what a trip! I absolutely loved your pictures and I can't imagine how huge those creations must have been up close. But all this snow must have been a big contrast from your sunny trip to Thailand! Miss you lots!
ReplyDelete