Sapporo Snow Festival

After taking a long "Christmas break" in the states, the blog is back and at it. It is now 2014 and we will start with snow in Tokyo. 

Snow in Tokyo? Yes.

You can see the roof tops covered in snow. We received 8 inches of snow on Saturday, February 8, 2014. The most snow Tokyo has received in 45 years. 

This is nothin'...... Notice all of the traffic! It usually doesn't snow in Tokyo, so when it does, we are all in a panic around here!

By the end of the storm, there was enough snow to make snowmen!!

The city pretty much shut down for the weekend because of the snow......including the airport. We had to catch a plane for Sapporo, Hokkaido (the northern island of Japan) on Sunday evening, and we were hoping that we could find a taxi driver brave enough to face the snow. Luckily, we did and we made it to a very crowded airport because of the previous day's cancellations. And how many flight cancellations were we dealing with? Over 700.  Yep! They were trying to squeeze all of those flights into Sunday afternoon and evening's schedule which caused our flight to be delayed by about 3 hours. That was fun!

As you can see below.......

Sapporo is on the northern most island of Japan and the proximity of Tokyo where we live on the island of Honshu. We arrived in Sapporo on Sunday night and went right to bed.

On Monday morning we got up and went to the snow festival. If you have never been to the festival before, it is hard to imagine exactly what it is. There are 3 different venues: two in the city and one about 30 minutes outside of the city. 

Japan recently celebrated The 65th Sapporo Snow Festival, one of Japan's largest winter events that attracts a growing number of domestic and international visitors every year. Every winter, about two million people come to Sapporo to see a large number of splendid snow statues and ice sculptures which line Odori Park, the grounds at Community Dome Tsudome, and the main street in Susukino. For seven days in February, these statues and sculptures turn Sapporo into a winter dreamland of crystal-like ice and white snow. Odori Avenue Park is more than 1,400 meters long. In summer it is full of beer gardens, while in winter it becomes the location for a snow festival. During the festival, this big park is lined with magnificent snow statues and beautiful ice statues.

This is the location where we started. Notice the white buildings behind Kent. Those buildings are made of snow as you will see.....

Here we have a little kids slide...... 

and here we have the kids standing in line to go down this slide. The wall they are standing against is the side of the slide. Yes, it is all snow.

Here we have a stage with a huge building attached to it in the background.

Well what do you know! Another kid slide. I wish my hips were smaller so I could fit on it!

Another amazing building. If I were standing in front of this, I would come up to the Chinese characters at the front of this sculpture. These buildings are about 5 stories high.

A closer side view.....

and even closer. Notice the detail.....

There are many, many sculptures of things, people, and animals. I will share a few here with you. This particular sculpture of a bear holding a fish represents Hokkaido.

These are famous cartoon characters.

I liked this one of a dad and his kids.

These are a famous children's program characters. Brittney, do you remember Ponkiki? Well, they are still alive and at it! 

You can now see how big this is with the people standing in front of it. 

This is another group of cartoon characters. Aun Paun Maun (Sweet Bean Bread Man), Shoku Paun Maun (Sandwich Bread Man), and their friend.....whose name has slipped my mind. I'm sure you just want to eat each of these, right??

Kent and I were standing by the 2nd place award in this category. As you can tell the size and the detail are so amazing.

This is Hello Kitty. You can't find anything cuter than this..... the little girl of course! 

J. Crew? Hmmmm. Since when did the J. Crew I know and love go to Japan with characters????

A set of stairs going up to one of the stages.

There was a video showing the building of the sculptures and I took some pictures hoping to share the immense work that goes into these sculptures. All of these sculptures were built by people who volunteered their time, talents, and money to make this festival possible.

Interesting......

Another huge sculpture......

This is the Coke bear.

I absolutely marveled at this one......

Scaffolding is used to build the sculptures. What is behind all of this scaffolding????........

A ski jump!! People were having a ski competition which was fun to watch.

We then went to the second venue to see the ice sculptures.

The streets were lined right down the middle of the street with sculptures.

They went on forever.....

and ever. Yes, those are real fish inside of the ice sculpture. Pretty cool!! Well,..... probably pretty cold!

Yep, more.....

Wow! Now this is an ice sculpture! How many stories high is this one?? Quite a few!

After we spent the day walking around the city, we decided to go back at night and see everything illuminated. It was a whole new sight!

Here we are!

We had the privilege of seeing someone sculpting with a chain saw. Pretty cool!

Check it out! He is sculpting a swan! One can only imagine what else he has been sculpting....

February 10 is a very special day for us. It is the 7th birthday of our oldest daughter, Brittney. February 10, 1990, was the last time we were here at the festival. It was a great day indeed with our 3 girls; Brittney, Rachelle, and Brooke. When we were here before, we went to the third venue where they have enormous snow sculpture slides for kids and adults. Kent had work to do and meetings to attend, so we weren't able to go to the third venue. Next time!!

So what does the night scene have for us?

Yep! They are way cool!! They are all much taller than people.

This is the intersection where the ice sculptures start.

This looks familiar from the daylight picture. It is so incredible how they are illuminated.

Stunning......

Simply amazing.

Now that we seen the sculpture, let's check out the food!

This is a Brazilian type food booth. Meat, meat and more meat.

This is good!

Grills cooking various kinds of food. This is a Japanese type pancake called Okonomiyaki. It consists of a batter kind of like our batter, but with added chopped cabbage, meat and other flavorings and sauces. It's yummy!

This is grilled chicken, probably teriyaki flavored.

So what are these brown things in the boxes?

Chestnuts!! The silver thing behind the boxes that looks like a cannon is the chestnut steamer.

The chestnuts are put in the steamer to cook for a while, the steam is eventually let out, and then 

the chestnuts are dumped in the basket. Fresh roasted chestnuts are incredible!

Is anyone up for a frozen chocolate covered banana or a frozen caramel apple? They are frozen because it is freezing outside.....

An open "pot" of soup? Hmmmm. I'm not sure that I would want to eat that with so many people passing by.

And what are these? They are called taco yaki. Tako is octopus. In other words, these are octopus

balls and here is what the finished product looks like......

For all of you skeptics out there, these are good.

Chicken on skewers.

Grilled crab? Yummmm!!

Beef with arugula. So delicious!

We went to a famous ramen shop. 

This is the entire shop. Two people standing next to each other with their arms extended to the sides is wider than this ramen shop. 

The chef in action!

The finished product. Yep, it was delicious!!! There is nothing better than home made ramen on a cold day.

For some reason, I can not rotate this picture. This is what we had for breakfast one morning. If you are looking at this thinking that you would rather die than eat this stuff, don't die just open your mouth and try it! If you don't try it, you are cheating yourself out of an extremely delicious breakfast!

Me in action with my Japanese breakfast!

Let's now check out the people.

This guy was dressed up wanting us to come into his booth. Did he convince us? No.....

These kids were standing in line for something wonderful! Aren't they cute?

These kids were from a school. It helps to have numbers on you so you don't get lost.

More kids....

Now these kids had an assignment. Find a foreigner who speaks English and try using your newly learned English on them. They stopped Kent and were going through the plethora of questions. "Hello. Where are you from? What is your name? My name is...... I am ........ years old." 

They were all 9 years old. So cute!!!

Check out this rolly polly teddy bear. Ooooo! I want to kiss those cheeks!

Look at these cute little kids standing at the window looking at the Girls Day Dolls. March 3 is Girls Day and everyone who has a daughter or daughters puts these dolls out to celebrate. It's a good day!

Wait a minute! These kids are not kids! They are mannequins! They sure fooled me!

Let's check out the streets. Notice how nicely shoveled and cleared the sidewalk is as well as the beautiful lights.

Now notice how unplowed the street is.

It's true. They don't have plows like we have in Bountiful so people just drive all over the city in the snow.

They are skilled drivers up north.

Since they don't have plows, they do have something like a giant snow blower that piles the snow up at the sides of the roads. They only use them on certain roads. Don't think lightly of these piles......

because they are taller than your car.

and almost taller than a truck!

This is a view of the city of Sapporo from our hotel room.

And another view of the city.

Sapporo ("important river flowing through a plain" in Ainu language. The Ainu language is spoken by a group of Indians that originally inhabited and still inhabit the island of Hokkaido.) is the capital of Hokkaido and Japan's fifth largest city. Sapporo is also one of the nation's youngest major cities. In 1857, the city's population stood at just seven people.
In the beginning of the Meiji Period, when the development of Hokkaido was started on a large scale, Sapporo was chosen as the island's administrative center and enlarged according to the advice of foreign specialists. Consequently, Sapporo was built based on a North American style rectangular street system which reminds us of Salt Lake City.

Sapporo became world famous in 1972 when the Olympic Winter Games were held there. Today, the city is well known for its ramen, beer, and the annual snow festival held in February.

Have a wonderful week. I hope this finds you well.

Enjoy!

Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa

Uncle Kent and Grandma Barb

Kent and Barb