Like everyone else who’d managed to catch Joanna Lumley’s fantastic documentary mini-series Japan, Joel and I found ourselves very excited about Hokkaido in general and the Sapporo Snow Festival in particular. We had been planning to make the trip since arriving in Japan in 2016, but each year we made the mistake of waiting too long to book and missing out on accommodation. Not in 2019, though! Not only did we get ourselves organised in time to attend Sapporo’s 70th Snow Festival, we also got to catch up with one of Joel’s best friends from primary school, Nick!
With average midday temperatures of -3°C, Sapporo is definitely a holiday location that warrants packing all of your winter-woollies. I also strongly recommend investing in a good pair of snow boots, even if you don’t plan to venture out of the cities. Despite wearing Gortex hiking boots for the duration of our trip, I slipped and fell on ice a great many times. One such slip occurred on a patch of ice directly in the path of an on-coming tractor and I suffered the indignity of being pulled along the ice on my behind, with Joel dragging me by the backpack to safety. I was very grateful for Joel’s heroics, but oh the shame!
The Sapporo Snow Festival started in Odori Park in 1950, allegedly when some local school children created a few snow sculptures for fun. 70 years on, the festival has become a huge community event and tourist attraction responsible for attracting nearly 2 million tourists per year. The event itself is free and the main Odori Park site is immediately outside the Sapporo Station, so it’s very easily accessed. We were surprised at the wide variety of snow sculpture subjects—there were Star Wars robots, a ‘steaming’ cup noodle ramen, racehorses and anime characters. Sadly, we found ourselves having to choose between seeing the snow festival’s sculptures illuminated at night, or visiting the Otaru Snow Light Path Walk. We reasoned that we’d seen some very impressive projection-mapped illuminations previously, so opted to visit Otaru instead. We were happy with our decision: the Otaru Snow Light Path
featured beautiful candle-lit lanterns and ice sculptures set with autumn leaves and flowers, and the route snaked around the town in such a way that we were able to see the frozen canal which was also dotted with lights. The atmosphere was very peaceful, which was welcome after a busy afternoon in the crowds at the snow festival.
