The Sapporo Snow Festival

Most children who live where it snows enjoy building a snowman. In Sapporo, in Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, snowmen come in all shapes and sizes, and it's adults who do the building. Some of these creations weigh over a thousand tons, and are breathtaking in their artistic detail. There also are snow creatures, snow gods, snow houses, pagodas and castles -- a virtual world modeled in snow! It is a short-lived world, just seven days in late January or early to mid-February. Then all the models are reduced back to snow.



The Sapporo Snow Festival, (Sapporo Yuki Matsuri), is the biggest in Japan. Though Sapporo is a little less than one hundred and fifty years old, it has blossomed into a bustling metropolis of 1.75 million people, and is now Japan's fifth-largest city. One snow model depicted "Sapporo's One-Millionth Citizen" as a bleary-eyed individual with just two bottom teeth. Not a very flattering image of the Sapporo residents! Annually the show attracts around 2 million visitors. Sapporo was designed with the aid of British and American town planners, it has wide, straight boulevards, and a 330-foot-wide park runs east and west through the center of the city. This is lined with lilac and acacia trees, which blend with green lawns and colorful beds of flowers in summer. However, it is a contrast in white in wintertime, and especially during the festival in snow. This festival dates from about 1950. To brighten the drudgery of the north's long winter, the children were organized to build snow models, for fun and exercise. As the festival grew larger, the city fathers saw big possibilities in using it to popularize Sapporo. The festival is now huge. A solid snow platform is constructed for each exhibit, and wooden scaffoldings are anchored into this base. These must be sturdy, as a thousand-ton avalanche of snow and ice can be dangerous to the viewer! During the seven day festival, Sapporo is transformed into a glittering fairytale land of snow and ice sculptures large and small. For the 1970 exhibition, ancient history was represented in a beautifully carved representation, forty-five feet high and one hundred feet broad, of the Abu-Simbel Rock Temple of Egypt, said to have been built by Ramses II in celebration of his conquest of the Sudan. This was complete with pharaohs, winged lions and hieroglyphics. Modern history was featured at another exhibition site, where the visitor could make his 'first big steps' among craters of the moon, but with feet crunching snow instead of moon dust. Alongside, two snowman astronauts, a snow lunar module and a snow Apollo 11 rocket lent realism to the scene. More recently, in 2004, there were statues of Hideki Matsui, the famous baseball player who plays for the New York Yankees. Odori Park - Sapporo's central park & playground hosts the artistic snow sculptures, the festival launch, and much of the live music and other entertainment. This section is open all day and illuminated each night. Two other sites are in use also - the Susukino site and the Satoland site. What is the weather like? It is very cold. Unless the weather is unusually warm expect it to be below freezing. Snowstorms are not uncommon. If you visit you're very likely to spend a great deal of time outdoors, so layer your clothing. Consider thermal underwear and take gloves or mittens, a warm hat, and a hooded jacket. For your feet you need something which will keep the cold and water out, so boots are likely to be the best option. In 2009, the Snow Festival will be held from February 5 through February 11, 2009. Geoff Cummings runs an outdoors site at http://www.outdoorlivingsupplies.com where products are available for all sorts of outdoors activities. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Geoff_Cummings