hokkaidid - snow festival

So, needless to say after my previous post, that I'm a fan of Hokkaido. Who knew I could actually feel that way about a place that gets that cold? Being from Melbourne, my concept of cold involves anything temperature that is less than double digits, so being in weather that's actually in the negative numbers freaks me out. I still can't believe there are countries out there that require stating it's positive 15 rather than just 15 to avoid people being confused about whether it's cold or hot.

Despite the cold and the fatigue associated with catching a 9:00 flight from Nagoya (meaning we had to leave my place at like 5 in the morning), we managed to make our way through the streets of Sapporo to admire all the snow sculptures. Unfortunately, arriving on the very last day of the festival meant that some of the statues had already started to melt, so probably weren't as amazing as they were supposed to be. Though, I shouldn't complain - it's still way better than anything I could make. My attempts to make a real snowman failed miserably in Nagano, and essentially was two misshapen snowballs stacked on top of each other.

And what Japanese festival wouldn't be complete with food and live entertainment? I'm going to blame the the whole traveling fatigue-thing for the deep-fried potato on a stick, potatoes slathered in Hokkaido butter, giant scallop, prawn & octopus gyoza, taco and brazilian sausage I ate that day. That, or the fact I witnessed a B-grade J-pop boy band cover the theme song to the latest Power Rangers while also giving a riveting performance with swords and everything.

That night we did manage to get ourselves to Susukino, a nightlife district in Sapporo to see some more sculptures, though this time made of ice.

While the sculptures were as equally impressive as the snow ones in central Sapporo, we left quite soon afterwards to head back to the hotel room and rest. We managed to completely forget that we had actually come here to see the closing ceremony of the festival, but by the time we realised this, we were too tired an too close to the hotel to care.