The day started with a short walk across the road to the station, where the train to Sapporo was uncharacteristically late, by about 3 minutes.
I saw a deer out the window of the train. We were doing quite a clip so by the time I got my phone out and switched the camera on he was long gone. I figured I'd just snap a shot of the passing terrain so I could say "I saw a deer in this sort of area" and by complete happenstance there was another deer standing there when I snapped the shot.
I also saw a fox much later in the trip standing on an embankment. I tried to work my synchronicity magic a second time, but there was no second fox.
After that we arrived in Sapporo to be greeted by the full majesty of the Snow Festival
At a clear area at one end some kids were throwing snowballs at their mother
A new baseball stadium is being built (at a guess from all the poster board stuff off to tone side of this), and I gather the guy in the carving is an ex player/commentator/team owner who has a bunch to do with it.
There were dozens of smaller carvings from a competition.
If anyone is interested in seeing them all, let me know and I'll make a gallery and share it.
If anyone is interested in seeing them all, let me know and I'll make a gallery and share it.
In the interim, have a smattering
Whale
Temple
An onion
I believe this is the girl from Spy x Family (Anya?)
one of the larger carvings
the stage carving where bands perform etc.
the five girls who they seem to have come up with as mascots for the festival
a mid sized carving
A booth where there were cutouts of the girls you could take your photo with and get a free postcard of them
A carving of a horse, probably sponsored by the Japan Racing Board or something.
No idea what was going on the stage. It involved a lot of yelling stuff at the crowd.
No idea what was going on the stage. It involved a lot of yelling stuff at the crowd.
A carving of some dinosaurs, there was some info on boards behind me.
Japanasaurus or something.
Japanasaurus or something.
Another mid sized carving
The famous Sapporo clocktower, illuminated
The clock hasn't worked since it was struck by lightning in 1955
An ice carving of the clock tower, out the front of the clock tower, also illuminated.
We went to a park
A woman was walking her Shiba Inu when it decided "nope. I'm sitting in the snow" for several minutes. It took a dog treat to get it to decide to get moving again.
A snow bear
A shrine in the park
another Shrine
a cold looking lion-dog statue
A festival of sorts was going on further in the park
There was a bigger Shrine/temple
The traditional hand cleansing station was almost frozen solid
The path to the Shrine was lined with stone lanterns
that evening we went up to the JR tower
to get a night time view of the city
I did this last time, but Emma hadn't seen it. Also it was a chance to visit my favorite toilet in Japan again.
Not sure what it is with observation decks and pianos. It's not like anyone is every playing them.
We dipped back to the festival
There was some curling demonstration going on
and the competition statues were lit up
This guy was being shone on the floor to advertise something.
Another mid range carving.
We somehow managed to miss a carving (actually I know how, it was annoyingly positioned so that if you only ever walked one way down the festival area (say from the direction of our hotel), you'd not see it because it was behind a barricade/temporary wall.
Anyway, here's someone else's YouTube video of it
Anyway, here's someone else's YouTube video of it
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