The Sapporo Snow Festival

The Sapporo Snow Festival (yuki matsuri) is one of Japan’s largest winter festivals and quite possibly, one of the largest in the world. Attracting millions of visitors from around the world to Hokkaido during one of the island’s coldest and snowiest weeks is a feat matched only by the feats of craftsmanship featured in the festival. Begun in 1950 by high school students building sculptures in Odori Park, the snow festival has grown to become an event that encapsulates the entire city.
In order to avoid the largest crowds, we decided to visit the festival the weekend before it opened and to then stay through Monday the 6th, the opening day of the festival. While there were certainly some downsides to this plan, it afforded us the unique opportunity to witness some of the sculptures in their early stages. Here, we see workers etching a title into the stage of one of the ice sculptures.
The most famous of the festival’s attractions are the giant snow sculptures. Built by soldiers from the Japanese SDF, each sculpture takes the efforts of thousands of men over the course of days to complete. Generally, they commemorate important moments from the previous year. This sculpture recognizes the accomplishments of Japanese golf sensation “Ai-chan” Miyazato who won this year’s Japan Open Championship. Hopefully the fellow in the front should give you some idea of scale; these things are literally a few stories tall.
Just about the coolest sculpture in the entire festival was this giant scene from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. The film is set to be released here in Japan in early March, and this is likely the largest advertisement that anyone will see for it.
One part of the festival that we missed most of was the sculpture competition. Teams are invited from all over the world to create snow sculptures that are then graded by a panel of judges. Since the judging is done on Wednesday, most of the sculptures were still in their early stages over the weekend. Here we see the Lithuanians breaking ground on their block of snow.
There were a few sculptures commemorating 2006, the "Year of Exchange" between Japan and Australia. This is a snow replica of Melbourne's famous Flinders Street train station.
Here we see a life-sized snow replica of the main hall at Horyuji in Nara, the world's oldest surviving wooden structure.
While most of the ice sculptures were being exhibited across town in the Susukino Ice Festival, there were a few on display in Odori Park.


One of the really fun sections of the festival features sculptures of popular characters from television and movies. I nearly flipped my proverbial lid when I saw this larger than life Wallace and Gromit (I also found out that I’ll finally get to see the movie when it’s released here in March).



Did you really doubt, even for a second, that there would be a Hard Gay sculpture? In fact, there were three separate ones; enough to satisfy even the most fervent fans. Fuu!
At night, the large sculptures are brought to life with light and sound shows. The Narnia sculpture was practically ruined by a tacky laser show and booming music. Nothing is scarier than pastel-colored polka dots.

In an expected show of defiance towards China, one of the giant sculptures commemorated Tiawan’s famous landmarks.
There was also a play area with interactive sculptures that you could play with and slide on. I kept telling Greg and Leo that we should've rented tuxes for this photo but they were apparently less dedicated to a fully realized "March of the Gaijin" than I.
This igloo even featured an incredibly life-like sculpture of Greg in the doorway! You've got to admire that attention to detail.
And really, what weekend in Hokkaido would be complete without drinking inside an igloo?

There's still plenty more to be said on the topic of Sapporo and the festival, so you will stay tuned for more updates throughout the week, won't you?