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So, here's my trip to Sapporo for the Snow Festival! Day One!
At the airport, the lady at the desk asked me if I wanted a window seat or not. It's fortunate that I did want a window seat, because I know the Japanese for 'window', but not for aisle. Haha... Anyway, you can immediately see the effect of the season on the landscape; as you go further north, very quickly, snow appears:
In Sapporo it was a nice, sunny day. This is the JR Sapporo train station, bright and modern. It may be sunny but it ain't warm.
I headed to Odori Park, the main site of the festival. It's a 1.5km-long, narrow park running through the city centre. There were rather a lot of people there and there was a real festival atmosphere! The park itself covers quite a few blocks, and people would get banked up waiting for the pedestrian crossing lights to change.
Snow just makes everything look beautiful, I think. Even ordinary trellises and rails look cool with some snow on them:
Although it's not obvious from these photos, there really is heaps of snow in Sapporo. Most of it has been effectively cleared off all the roads, and paths have been cleared on the footpaths. Of course there is still a lot of ice and slush on the paths, but they've dealt with this by adding loads of sand to the ice. This adds friction so that you can walk safely on the ice without slipping. Okay, obvious to anyone who lives in snowy countries, but not to me.
They have these free dispensers of bags of sand, so that you can help yourself and sand the path if it's too slippery:
Odori Park itself crosses several blocks, so it's kind of divided into segments. Each 'segment' usually featured a couple of prominent snow sculptures, along with some other, smaller snow sculptures, and various other stalls or attractions. Here's one of the prominent ones:
Look! It's Aslan! One of the big snow sculptures was for the new movie Prince Caspian:
There were lots of smaller statues too. Some of them made me laugh:
Ahh, snow is so... white!
Different countries contributed snow sculptures, usually representing some aspect of their own culture. Australia wasn't there, but New Zealand was, and some Asian countries... This one made me think of Stace:
I mentioned to a couple of my friends that the fashion for guys in Japan can be slightly effeminate. I found a good example right here. Who do you think spent more time in front of the mirror this morning, the guy or his girlfriend?
I thought this sculpture was quite well-planned. It's some happy people eating takoyaki... and what's right across the path from the sculpture? Why, it's a takoyaki stand!
There were heaps of families and heaps of children scampering around in the snow. I tell you what, this place was brilliant for kids. They had lots of live shows for with singers and children's cartoon characters in costumes; kids were playing in the snow or throwing snowballs, there was an ice skating rink and some kids' slides made from ice, and I don't know what else...
I thought this one was pretty cute!
Why is this next picture funny? Well, you may not realise the purpose of this bus. It's a Smoking Bus. You can't smoke in the park, so if you want to smoke, you have to go on the bus and breathe in the second-hand smoke of all your fellow nicotine junkies. Hahaha!
I spent a while looking for a 'cafe that wasn't Starbucks'. (I really like Starbucks here, but I go every day. If I go to a new city, it's nice to find somewhere different.) I was glad I looked a little harder...
I went back to Odori Park at night, rugged up in several extra layers. It was mighty cold. The sculptures were lighted up at night:
There was quite a lot of festival food and on my first night I had some ramen. Ramen is one of the (seemingly endless number of) foods that Sapporo is famous for. I stood outdoors at a little 'stand up while you eat' stall, and scarfed it all down. I tell you what, Japanese people can eat ramen FAST. I bolted mine but I still finished after everyone else around me.
To be honest, I've only had ramen twice since coming to Japan. It's quite nice but to me it tastes just like eating a bowl of instant noodles, so I kind of question its nutritional value. Admittedly, unlike instant noodles, ramen has a small number of real (as opposed to freeze-dried chemical) vegetables and meat floating in it, so I guess it's good for something other than increasing your sodium count.
Mmm, fresh and hot!
The sculptures look cool at night...
Some of them had light and sound shows. This one is the sculpture for Prince Caspian and it had sound effects and narration as the lights changed over the sculpture. It was pretty cool:
I will probably post more about Sapporo - the other two days - and more photos, but I might wait a bit. There are already heaps of photos on this page so I don't want to overwhelm anyone's Internet connection. :)
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