In mid-February, the city of Sapporo in the northern island of Hokkaido turns its snow and ice into something awesome. The Yuki Matsuri is one of Japan's biggest festivals, and it attracts people from all over the world. I went with Erin and three of my friends from Komatsu over a four-day weekend. We flew from Komatsu to Tokyo, and taxiing in, saw the Pikachu Plane. We talked about what it would be like to ride it and took pictures. Then we got to our gate...
...AND REALIZED WE GOT TO RIDE THE PIKACHU PLANE TO SAPPORO.
(Photo by Suoh Sato, not me. But you get the idea.)That set the tone for the trip. Hokkaido is famous for its beer, the quality of its seafood and veggies, and also for how open people are to visitors. The people at our hotel were super nice, and our stay included free drinks at the bar and breakfasts. Something I learned last time I went to Japan (with my college choir) is that upper-mid range Japanese hotels are serious about breakfast. There's an equal array of Western and Japanese breakfast foods, and most of the Japanese foods have a pedigree--there were signs about where the rice, miso, and veggies came from. Some of the Western foods seem a bit out of place--breakfast salad, anyone?--but were all tasty. The hotel would have been out of our price range entirely if not for early booking through a travel agency...which still exist here and do decent business.
The main attraction of the Yuki Matsuri is the snow and ice sculptures. These were all intricate and gorgeous beyond words, so I'll let them do the talking.
Yes, those are real fish.
You can see more on my Flickr page and (soon) my Picasa page, which won't limit me to 200 photos to share with you without paying. I recommend the "Yuki Matsuri by Day" set, which has the entries from Sapporo's sister cities.
The food was amazing: salmon dumplings, crab shells full of fresh crab meat, seafood gumbo, and what the meat-eaters described as amazing ramen. Erin and I have plans to go back to Sapporo in the summer for the food and giant beer garden alone.
Incidentally--I like to think because of the beer and tasty food--Portland and Sapporo are sister cities. All of Sapporo's sister cities entered snow sculptures, including Portland. The piles of snow mask the detail, but not the hilarity of the title.
Dear readers, I give you: Spawning for the Future.
Yes. That is what it is called. To be fair to it, its design is covered by about three inches of powder snow. I'm sure the future and the spawning are much more discernible once it's dusted off.
All in all, the trip was fabulous. I was expecting freezing cold, but it stayed around 0 to -4 degrees celsius (32 to about 26 fahrenheit) the entire time we were out and about. Drinking in public is legal in Japan, so we had plenty of beer and hot wine from the booths to keep us fortified.
Yuki Matsuri is one of those things that sounds gimmicky, but, now that I've been, I can say for certain that it's worth the trip!
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