Sapporo Yuki Matsuri

Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Jeri who dreamed of one day traveling to Japan and witnessing the glory of the giant ice and snow sculptures at Sapporo’s Yuki Matsuri. She waited and waited, until she could wait no longer. Then, one day, all her dreams came true.

Okay, so that story isn’t completely true. It’s more like “Once upon a time Jeri got placed in Hokkaido and subsequently learned that the one awesome thing about the winter was the aforementioned festival”. But hey, both are equally valid reasons to attend, right?

Whether you’d been dreaming about it for ages like imaginary Jeri, or had only heard about it this year like real Jeri, chances are you were looking forward to the Yuki Matsuri this year. Let me tell you something, it did not disappoint.

 

I don’t live in the city, so I didn’t have a chance to visit until the weekend. When Friday finally rolled around, I was ecstatic and giddy as I hopped into Jessica’s car at 2 pm to go pick up Tracy and head into the city. We drove for an hour, sampling classics from my winter playlist, and finally arrived, parked the car, and walked out towards Odori park, where the festival was being held. 

 

According to the website, there are thousands of spectacles to behold at the festival. They had 2,416,000 visitors last year, virtually doubling Sapporo’s population (although I’m slightly confused as to how they count visitors at a free festival). The festival also boasts 228 ice and snow sculptures at its three sites. Most of them are small, but many are massive and unbelievably impressive. In fact,  there is so much snow needed for these sculptures that it takes them 6.500 five-ton trucks to move it all around. With all this in mind, I was ready to check out the sites for myself.

The first thing I saw when we got to Odori was a giant castle made of ice. The intricacy and detail of the sculpture was stunning, and I couldn’t take my eyes away. Everywhere I looked I saw smaller pieces of art made of snow, the subjects being anything from Totoro to the Taj Mahal. 

 

The second thing I noticed was the insane amount of foreigners that had come into the city. In general, I just assume that if I run into another foreigner in the city, I probably know them. I know this isn’t always accurate, but it holds up a lot of the time. Not this weekend. As soon as we got there, the three of us were accosted by a group of very drunk American Navy soldiers who promptly made it their duty to make Jessica very uncomfortable. Tracy and I acted like bad friends and laughed and snapped photos. Oops.

 

We walked along the park, admiring the artistry and ducking into a conbini every so often to try to bring some feeling back to our numb toes. Once we had travelled the length of the park, we decided to walk to the Susukino festival site, with help from Jesse, our incredibly wonderful Sapporo guide. 

 

The sculptures at that site were more beautiful in a sense. Since they were made of ice and not snow, they seemed more delicate, more dainty than the ones at Odori. We walked and looked and walked and sat in ice cars and had our pictures taken, and did all the wonderful fun Sapporo Snow Festival stuff. At that point, we were starting to get hungry, so we decided to indulge in what is probably the best (and most underrated) part of the festival: festival food.

 

 

We returned to Odori and frequented the Indian food stand, since as a vegetarian, it was probably the only stall I could eat at. I got hot mango juice and vegetable curry, which turned cold as soon as I sat down to eat it. In the never-ending war of temperature, the heat of my food definitely lost this battle. That being said, the food was delicious and hit the spot. Also, if you haven’t tried it, hot mango juice is absolutely delicious. It’s my new winter drink. For real. The others satiated their taste-buds at the international area of the festival, where they could purchase the kebabs that they had been craving all afternoon. Was it worth it? I don’t know, ask them.

 

 

Then, finally, came the moment we had all been waiting for. Ever since we had showed up, Tracy had wanted to go to an ice bar. She’s from Australia, you see, and is completely unused to all the interesting and exciting things that the winter can bring. That said, with our stomachs full, we headed to one of the many ice bars. We ordered warm drinks and stood next to a table made of ice, smiling and chatting with each other while reminiscing about the wonderful day that we had had. It was truly a great, albeit cold, end to a great, albeit cold, day.

In conclusion, if you missed the festival this year, shame on you, but I  just gave you the highlights so fret not. If you were there, I hope you had as much fun as I did!