Moomba

My first full day in Sapporo, where the streets were covered with snow and the temperature struggled go higher than -8 C, was spent wandering around Maruyama Park and the Hokkaido Jingu shrine.



















I then wandered the myriad of underground walkways in Sapporo for a while. Like other winter snow laden cities of the world there is a subterranean world that supports life away from the snow.

On my second day I ventured out on yet another gloriously sunny day to the snow festival. This was my primary reason for visiting Sapporo at this time.

The festival is held in three locations, two of which I visited. The third was mainly an entertainment area for children with various snow related activities.

The first I visited was the Susukino site where a block of one street had many ice carvings on display. Some were intricately carved and other quite novel including various items such as fish inside the ice.


















Next up I headed to the main site on Odori Park. The park is a block wide and stretches 12 blocks through the middle of Sapporo. There was a one way anti-clockwise route around the park.

The structures here were mostly snow.










There were many smaller snow sculptures along the path some of which were Japanese cartoon characters.









Snowmiku seems to be some sort of mascot for the festival and she appeared all over the place including at all the tourist tat stalls.




Of course Hello Kittty had to make an appearance.



I like irony.




There were several huge snow sculptures of buildings and one enormous ice sculpture with Taiwan as the theme.

















There were a few stages with live music etc and a snowboard jump site where demonstrations were being held.





Towards one end was the competition area where teams from across the globe were working on their sculptures. I didn’t get to see the finished results of these, as they were not due to have them complete until the day I left Japan.








After spending the day out in the cold it was nice to head underground again and get some food and something hot to drink and I just had to try some KFC flavoured potato chips.



Many Many Many More Photos Of Snow Festival