Sapporo Snow Festival
The Sapporo Snow Festival is a very famous event held every year, seven days in February. This year it was held from February 5 - 11, 2004. Next year it is planned to occur from February 7 - 13, 2005.
It is one of the largest winter events in Japan, and many teams from various foreign countries participate. It is thought to be as one form of international communications. About two million people come to see the enormous beautiful snow statues made from hard work, lining up in Odori Park.
The topic for the statues varies, and it is likely to feature an incident or famous person that happened last year. For example, this year (2004) there were statues of Matsui Hideki; the famous baseball player who plays for the New York Yankees. There are even some long slides made by ice, which people can actually slide down!!
The Snow Festival began in 1950, when local high school students built six snow statues in Odori Park. In 1955, the Self-Defense Force joined in and built the very first massive snow sculpture, for which the Snow Festival has become famous for now. Sometimes, when they are fewer snows than usual, the Self-Defense Force brings snow from other places to open the festival.
When you actually visit to see this festival, you must be careful what to bring. It is very cold in Sapporo in February to stay outside for a long time. You might need a lot of warm clothes to put on more layers of clothing. Other necessary things could be appropriate shoes to walk on frozen sidewalks and tissues for a runny nose. Also, don’t forget to bring your camera to take a nice picture.
External links
- Official Sapporo Snow Festival site (Japanese) (http://www.snowfes.com)
- Official Sapporo Snow Festival site (English) (http://www.snowfes.com/english/index_e.html)
- Images from Sapporo Snow festival (Openhistory.org) (http://www.openhistory.org/pics/snow_fest/index.html)
ja:さっぽろ雪まつり