Went to Sapporo snow festival 'Yuki Matsuri' last Thursday and Friday. Its in Hokkaido which is the northernmost island in Japan. For one week the city of Sapporo is home to giant snow and ice sculptures, outdoor parties and other such merry events.
We spent the first day visiting a town called Otaru which is famed for its canal, good sushi restaurants, sake and glass making factories, of which I saw the first, ate and drank the second and visited the third. All very lovely. Since it was a company organised trip with 10 of us going, we did it in true Japanese style with a bus tour - it is true that the Japanese feel safe in groups and following the herd is not a stereotype for nothing! But it was fun enough and we were able to go off later on and do our own choice of things.
Later on the same day we went to the main event in Sapporo. The sculptures were lit up at night and looked truly beautiful. There is a vast range of scultures from the very big replicas of world buildings to smaller cartoon characters, animals and sci-fi characters. The Wallace and Gromit was good, as was the massive 'Narnia' construction - made to coincide with the launch of the new film. There was a band playing in front of one of the bigger sculptures of the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. They must have suffered in the sub zero temperatures with what they were wearing although we kept ourselves warm by dancing like crazy tourists.
The detail of some of the scultptures was really impressive, every contour had been precisely thought about and carved with so much thought.
Apparently the whole event has been going for 57 years and started during the depression after the war. A few bored university of high school students started making scultpures in the snow which is so abundant this time of year, it caught on as a tourist attraction and now 2 million visitors come every year. Apparently the Hokkaidoites (if that is what you can call them) are very proud now that instead of just having to shovel the snow from their drives every day, they have something beautiful to show as well.
The baileys 'tent' was a welcome diversion too. They were serving hot baileys mixed with coffee or green tea (?) all housed in a big ice house.
We ate lavender ice-cream in the snow, went round ice mazes, down snow slides on rubber inflatables and spent a stupid amount of time putting on and taking off clothes to accomodate the changes in temperature from outside to indoors. On Thursday it was minus 9 degrees and a toasty minus 6 on Friday. The hotel, though had the heating on so high that I couldn't sleep properly overnight! But it was a nice hotel and the western bed provided much relief from the months of sleeping on Japanese futons!
Got home tired but really happy to have seen another part of Japan. Would like to go again in the summer where the temperatures are more tolerable than in the south and where there are some great places to walk.
Now I'm back at work planning my next trip away - I have four days holiday in March and am thinking Shanghai, Seoul or Hong Kong....going to have to eat cabbage stew for a month and be a bit of a hermit...
Also had a belated housewarming / mulled wine (thank you Steph) party on Saturday night with a bunch of female friends. Very nice.
And went to Odaiba on Sunday which is an island in Tokyo bay made from reclaimed land. Its essentially an amusement place with lots of shopping, entertainment centres and restaurants. Visited Fuji TV studios, and a mamouth exhibition - where they were showing a real baby mamouth preserved through being frozen for hundreds of years. It was really eerie to see not least because it was just the mamouth's head! Fascinating though.
Saw some more great views of Tokyo from more highrise buildings. Practised baseball hitting in indoor nets - I was not at all bad! Ate in nice restaurants, went to the Toyota showroom which has a moving cinema - you sit in seats that shake you around as if you were in a racing car! Also went on rides which simulate freefall - scary as hell, and also ones which shoot you into the air at some ungodly speed. My lunch stayed down luckily but had wobbly legs afterwards!
All for now - Happy Valentines day to everyone too!
