Sapporo Snow Festival: More snow sculptures than you can shake a stick at!

Day 2- Retinal white-out
After our first night, Seth and I woke up nice and early.  The Haines' were going to take the morning pretty slow so we ventured out by ourselves to hit up all of Sapporo's city monuments.  First we grabbed a smokey breakfast at McDonalds (75% of restaurant was the non-smoking section). Then we took a trip to good 'ol "Red Bricks."

Here we are in front of the old Hokkaido government building.  This building is very popular because it was built in 1888 to mimic the Massachusetts State House AND it was constructed using 2.5 million red bricks (red bricks were rare in Japan at that time). Currently it serves as a history museum for Hokkaido.  It was free and warm, so Seth and I took a mental note for later when we were with the Haines.

Once we caught up with the Haines we headed to the snow sculptures.  The picture above shows an owl native to Hokkaido as well as a model of Red Bricks.  The magnitude and detail was insane!

This is the back wall of the owl snow sculpture.  To put it in perspective, I'm 5'2" and standing about 10ft away.  The back wall is easily 4x taller than me!  Sweet sassy molassy these things were huge!  It wasn't too long before we got to one of Seth's favorite displays: The Lion King.  Naturally, Seth snatched up Reagan so we could do the "Circle of Life" pose in front of it. 

(from laughingplace.com)
For lunch we grabbed a table in the middle of about 100 vendors and quickly fell into a trance.  You see, the natives of Hokkiado, the Ainu, are viewed in much the same way as we view Native Americas.  In the past they were thought of as northern savages, but now their culture is revered as being very rich.  It is no surprise that they would be given the stage to share their heritage.  

Some Ainu in their traditional attire.  The lady on the left is playing a musical instrument called the "Mukkuri."

We were privileged to be able to sit in on such a performance.  No only because it gave us insight into their practices, but also because it was just SO FUNNY!  Ok, ok, ok, I suppose the more mature members of the audience didn't see the humor in it that we did, but to us it was comic gold.  Seth went ahead and made a video for this.  Enjoy.



After lunch we kept on truckin' down the trails to see the rest of the displays.

This snow sculpture is of a Japanese animation show called Sazae-san. It has been going on for 42 years starting in 1969. This large snow statue (roughly 25" tall) was amazingly done and was easily a crowd favorite with the Japanese.

Once night had come we ate some dinner then headed back to see all of the snow sculptures at night.  Above is the "big air" snowboarding competition which Seth loved. 

This giant ice sculpture was my favorite and was very cool to see at night with all of the lights.

Above is a 1/3 scale model of one of the three main pavilions in Kyoto.  When we had spent time in Kyoto, we saw the gold pavilion which was part of the three.  Here are statistics according to a sign posted right next to it:

Amount of snow: 803 dump trucks = 4,015 tons
Number of sculptors: About 4,500 people in total
Sculpting period: 31 days 

Pretty crazy, huh?  If you would like to see more from the snow sculpture bonanza, simply click to enlarge the photo below. 


-Kate

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2 Response to "Sapporo Snow Festival: More snow sculptures than you can shake a stick at!"

  1. Glen Darby Says:

    December 15, 2011 at 12:53 AM

    You sure had a lot of fun seeing the snow sculpture! I am so overwhelmed by the collection of photos you have in here.

  2. Glen Darby Says:

    December 31, 2011 at 7:18 PM

    Have a Happy New Year and a Prosperous 2012 ahead.

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