Sapporo Snow Festival

Tuesday, Feb 11th, is a national holiday. Because of this, we decided to take Monday off as well to have an extended 4-day weekend (at least Miklos, Tori doesn't work on Mondays) and check out the famous Sapporo Snow Festival. Sapporo is the largest city on Hokkaido, the large Japanese island north of the main island. It is also home of the brewery with the same name. We planned this trip long in advance, since due to the popularity, the prices for hotels & plane tickets go up quite a bit. We booked the hotel back in September and the flights in November.

We left Nagoya on Saturday morning. We were very happy to have found Maria, a kind fellow cat-lover, who agreed to come and give Mama her medication twice a day while we were gone. We landed and took a bus into the city. We were surprised how far outside the city the airport was; it took us about an hour by bus to get into the city.

Our first day we explored the ice festival, a collection of various ice sculptures along one of the main streets in down-town Sapporo. They were illuminated and looked really pretty. However, it was our first day and we were not acclimated to the cold yet, so we just went to Ramen Alley for dinner which was close in proximity. Ramen Alley is, as the name suggests, a fairly small alley, lined with ramen restaurants. We even found one that served vegetarian ramen (which is hard to find, since even if there is not meat in the ramen, the broth is often pork or seafood based).

The next morning we dressed up as warmly as possible and went to a restaurant that is famous for their Hokkaido Soup Curry. This is a dish that is full of vegetables, seafood and a roasted chicken legs in a well-seasoned broth. Tori, of course, did not eat this dish.

After lunch we went around and checked out the snow festival. The festival itself was along the main park of the city and covered a distance of 12 blocks. The snow sculptures came in various shapes and sizes and it was amazing to see them! Some of them were made by amateurs, some by professionals. Some were just a foot or two tall, others were enormous and up to 30 feet tall! One of the most impressive snow sculptures was to celebrate Japanese/Polish friendship and was a 1:2 scale replica (meaning half the size of the original!!) of Ostrogski Palace, which now contains part of the Chopin Museum in Warsaw.

Another unique thing at the snow festival was a huge ramp built where brave skiers and snowboarders (we were able to see junior competitors between the ages of 8-14) were jumping down, doing

flips and such. It was incredible to see that live. Most of the festival was lined with food/drink stalls (and interestingly: smoking igloos).

In the evening we went to the Sapporo Beer Garden for dinner. It was really cool to see because it is housed in the old brewery building from the 1890s (Sapporo is a fairly new city in Japan and so is the brewery). The dinner included 2 hours all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink of Sapporo beer. We were lucky because our dinner ended at a time where they did not seat new people anymore, so they did not rush us to get out and we were able to stay for 3 hours. The dinner centered around a traditional dish called 'Genghis Kahn', which is a tabletop grill where you grill marinated lamb and vegetables. However, we were also able to order Sushi, pizza, salads, sides, vegetables to grill, etc. so there were a lot of options for Tori to eat as well and we had a lot of fun!

Surprisingly, the best part of this dinner was not dinner itself. Outside the brewery they had a bunch of winter/christmas lights and it was snowing large snowflakes and it felt like a christmas miracle. It was so beautiful and peaceful! While we were waiting for our cab, we also noticed that it has become significantly colder: Temperatures went down to -15C (or 5F), so we just went back to the hotel and warmed up.

The next day (Monday) we decided to explore Sapporo a bit more. We explored the ice sculptures some more and saw them this time around in daylight. After having lunch at a delicious Indian restaurant, we took the trolley to get to Mount Moiwa. During this trolley ride we got to see some other parts of Sapporo from the comfort and warmth of the trolley. Once we arrived at the bottom of Mt. Moiwa, we took the cable car up to the peak and had a beautiful view of the city and surroundings. We spent the rest of the day walking around in the downtown area and buying some souvenirs/presents. Later we found that Miklos's favorite chain Gindaco (they sell Takoyaki, octopus filled doughballs) has a special restaurant in Sapporo. Unlike the usual places that only sell for takeout, they actually have a sit-down section and center on Takoyaki & Highball. Additionally, they not only sell Takoyaki, but also other octopus centered dishes and it was a really cool experience.

Tuesday morning we just packed up and left early morning to get to the airport and come back to Nagoya. All together it was an awesome trip. The snow and ice festivals were really cool to see and offered a good reason to visit Sapporo, although we were not quite ready for how cold it got!