Japan - Sapporo and the Snow Festival

From Niseko we headed to Sapporo to check out the snow festival. We got on the bus for another long ride. This time there were some more Europeans on the bus and like us, they quickly became hot because once again it was stuffy and there was no air moving. They managed to crack one of their windows open about an inch. As we traveled it got colder and colder and when we stopped for a bathroom break they decided to close the window – only it was now frozen open.

Several people including the driver tried to close the window without any luck. The driver even got a can of de-icer and sprayed it everywhere but it didn’t work. Without a word he went back to the front of the bus and when he returned he had a small blow-torch. I’m not kidding. He lit it and proceeded to heat the window frame for a few minutes. We thought this was hysterical and were getting a good laugh out of it, but it worked and he got the window closed.

When we arrived in Sapporo there wasn’t that much snow and I remarked to my g/f that they should have had the festival in Niseko. Little did I know I’d eat those words later. Our hotel was fairly nice, but it was very hot in the room. I cranked the AC down but nothing happened. I guess they just turn it off in the winter time. Again, it was very stuffy and very uncomfortable. Temp wise, it was the worst stay we had the entire time.

The hotel had some tv guides / brochures for “non-theraputic” massages. I should have got a picture of these, but I didn’t think they would show up very well. It was fairly evident that you could get a happy ending in that town without any problems. I found this a bit strange that the hotel would carry the ads since it was a fairly nice and upscale kind of place. But they even ad some good ads for Japanese porn on the TV:





We took off and headed for the snow festival. It wasn’t any colder than when we were in Niseko, but we weren’t dressed as warmly and quickly found ourselves freezing. Still we checked out a few block’s worth of the sculptures before heading back to the hotel for a good dinner (see the crab feast!).

The next day we only had a few hours, but it was plenty of time to check out the snow festival, and we were dressed a lot warmer. Here are some pics from the festival – some of the sculptures took several months and umpteen dump trucks of snow to build.

Here is part of a sculpture:



And to give you an idea of how big it really was:



Here is some more of the same sculpture:





And the whole sculpture:



This was one of my g/f’s favorites:



A castle made of ice:



And a handful of Japanese oddities:







The even liked Tigger:



And boy, did it ever start snowing. Mostly it was just cold and lightly snowing but after emerging from a basement bar from lunch it was pounding snow. That’s me standing on the street corner after walking in the snow for maybe 5 or 10 minutes.



From Sapporo we headed back to Tokyo for about a day and a ½ before moving on to Kyoto. We were supposed to fly on an Airbus, which I am not fond of. As it turns out, we both had our first flight on a 747. They use a lot of 747’s in Japan. This one was a 747-400 and had a 400+ passenger configuration. We got lucky and had one of the only rows with a spare seat. Again, no air and it was stuffy.

I was glad to get some down time in Tokyo. At that point I needed the break as I had been walking or snowboarding for over a week straight and my old ankle injury was really starting to give me a fit.