We have heard from a number of people here that one of the most fun things they did here in Japan was visit the Sapporo Snow Festival in Hokkaido. We took an organized trip up that did all the planning for us, so we just got to enjoy the journey!
One thing is that northern Japan is one of the snowiest places on the planet. Sapporo is on the island of Hokkaido, which is pretty far north (I think Maine or southern Canada as far as latitude). The festival is a celebration of snow and ice with many fun statues and sculptures, some of which are really big!
There is a radio tower that’s a famous landmark of the city that we started our walk at after getting checked in. The flight up north was roughly 5 hours, plus about an hour or so on the bus getting to our hotel. Quite the journey, but worth it for the cooler weather (that was kind of a shocker)! This tower is large and you can go up in it, but we didn’t as there was a pretty long line already.
This guy is called a Daruma, but normally he doesn’t have a body like this. There was a large wall with scenes of him painted all over it, falling and trying to skate. It was pretty funny. There was also a brand of instant ramen that had an ad (the large Y-looking character above) and they also used Daruma in their designs. We saw him all over the place!
Some more pictures from the festival. This bird is a Hokkaido resident (we didn’t see any of them unfortunately), but they look so cute. The different prefectures have mascots and this is the one for the north here. You can also see the huge hills of snow people are walking through to get anywhere. The city plows the sidewalks and the streets, so there’s not much room for all the snow to escape to.
Here you can see some of the fun snow sculptures. A lot of them are for popular products or iconic destinations. They are really big! You can see the castle with the people on it touching it up. Quite large and also holds a lot of weight (and all snow!) One thing we learned was that after the festival they bulldoze the statues because when they start to melt they become very dangerous, because it’s tons and tons of snow that could fall over. Wow!
Sapporo hosted the 1972 Winter Olympic games, so they had some markers up with information. There was also an ice skating rink which was pretty funny to watch because people were trying to ice skate that clearly had no idea what they were doing. I’m not sure if it’s just a fun “winter activity” tourists like to do, or if people live in Sapporo and have no idea how to ice skate? Either way, a lot of fun to watch them try, haha!
We got some good dinners while we were up there as well. They had a fun yakiniku spot we hit up, plus lots of cafes and ice cream! That ice cream we got was a from a sake museum that had a lot of the local brew on display. The ice cream was made from rice that had been used in the process so it had kind of a light sake flavor to it. It was really good!
We also went up to the Sapporo Brewery which was a really cool experience. The building is over 100 years old and was still sporting its original brick. There was a walking tour that had a history of the brand throughout the years and then at the end a tasting room where you could sample some of their wares, including one that was only served there.
Some exterior shots of the brewery and then walking around the city at night. You can see they go all out for the festival with the lights! Really a pretty walk, especially with some light snow coming down. We got a nice hot bowl of soup for dinner, delicious. And it helped warm up the body, as after living in Okinawa, the cold hits different!
The snow mountains all over the streets were pretty fun, haha. It was a great time watching the snow sculptures light up at night. Some of them had laser light shows that animated them, along with music. It was spectacular! I’ve got a video I will try to upload to youtube and paste the link below. Another thing is this guy that looks like a playing card king. He’s part of a distillery called Nikka, and there was a lot of this guy around the town, as there’s a distillery up in Hokkaido.
Here’s a link to the video. It might not work in the browser (you might have to click through to YouTube to see it). It’s a pretty fun video!
Here are some candids I got of folks hanging out on the streets. There was some guy looking to busk which I couldn’t believe as it was so cold and snowy! The snow was thick wet snow too so, not exactly a good time wandering through it. If you notice the sidewalks you’ll see that they are actually heated! They heat them so that ice doesn’t form on the main thoroughfares, and then keep it up so the frozen water doesn’t turn to ice. Sometimes it’s pretty jarring when you go from an area with no heat to a heated one, as there’s an ice shelf that’s almost a foot tall. I didn’t get too many photos of the icy sidewalks as I was struggling to stay upright!
As always, thanks for reading!