When I went to travel to Sapporo to have fun with friends (we met there because we came from different areas), one afternoon we went to Odori Park and came to witness a busy but very interesting festival.
The festival was called Sapporo Snow Festival and apparently, Odori Park was one of the 3 venues where the festival was happening. The other two were Susukino, where our accommodation was, and Tsudome, which I'll post about at another time.
In Odori Park, there were snow sculptures and, not just small ones but bigger ones as well!
There were anime figures that umm, I wasn't sure who but maybe a famous person turned into an anime character or maybe this was really a famous anime character!? I just wasn't sure but he looked important.
There's another surrounded by chibis with a proud man in the center. Notice the eyes. They seem to be melted or not properly carved but you can see how well they put effort in details on the hair and the costume.
As we were enjoying the festival, which by the way was a little bit hard to walk because the snow had started to harden and some areas were wet from the melted snow, we passed by this cute cat who's like a candidate for mayor because of its sash. π It looked so cute so of course, I couldn't pass the opportunity to take a memorabilia together with it.
See how big this cat was? He's bigger and looks stronger than me! How did they put the whiskers and keep it that way?!
We then stumbled upon this big cathedral. At that time, I didn't really know what this was but later on, I discovered it was the Helsinki Cathedral in Finland. It was the 100th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between Japan and Finland, and to commemorate it, this large snow sculptured cathedral was built.
It was so huge that it became a stage! Imagine people coming up there, it's that huge! Just look at how small we were compared to this sculpture.
We also saw famous virtual characters: Hatsune Miku from Vocaloid and Toyama Kasumi from the anime BanG Dream. You might be wondering why Miku was here. Well, Hatsune Miku was born in Sapporo!
Too bad we were there in the afternoon. At night they had illuminations and apparently, this Hard Rock snow sculpture shines brightly along with the music they're performing. Argh, I wished we come back to see their performance.
Later on, there was an event on stage. We didn't really bother to listen and analyze what they were saying. It took a lot of brain cells to listen to Japanese at that time, since I was still just a year old living in Japan. Surprisingly I took a very short video from what they're doing on stage and it was a quiz for the audience.
This festival wouldn't be complete without food!
There were many kinds. You know the usual festival food you'd see in Japan. We just came from lunch so we weren't really into more viands so we were out looking for desserts.
The strawberries and choco bananas were so tempting that we thought we wouldn't buy anything.
In the end, my friends got each to try, to complete their Japan festival experience. π My friends told me the fruits were so good! I was tempted to even buy one for myself but I ultimately decided to pass.
During one of the nights we were at Sapporo, while waiting for my friends, we stopped by at Odori Park again but not at the snow sculpture area. I got to witness the famous Sapporo TV Tower lit up at night and it was indeed beautiful!
I was standing from the Odori Park, where the festival was held and saw the tower from there. It seems like this park was one of the places where you could get a good view of the TV tower built in the 50s.
While waiting for my friends do their individual errands, I was looking at the game being played at the Snow Interactive Game area. Too sad I was only able to take a photo when it was being ready as when the game started, I was just watching the people play.
When my friends came back, I urged them to play the game. You make a snow ball and throw it on the screen hitting the snow man you'd see. It's a team effort so you had to make sure all the snow man would be gone.
And those were the memories of my first Sapporo trip. It was February 2019 and we were lucky to be there during the Snow Festival which ran for 8 days (Feb. 4~11, 2019). During the pandemic, they weren't able to hold the festival onsite, and I heard it became online. At February 2024, the festival was reopened to the public again.
It would be nice to go again this Winter 2025, after 6 long years, but I already made plans this Winter and going to Sapporo Snow Festival wasn't one of them. But who knows maybe on 2026 I can go again..?
Thanks for reading!
See you around! γγγγγΎγγοΌ
With love,
All photos are taken using my camera unless stated otherwise.