Hokkaido Snow Festival 2016

Last week, Heather and I took the girls and traveled up to Japan's northern most island, Hokkaido, to attend the world famous Sapporo Snow Festival.  The festival spans about a week and is held in three main areas in Hokkaido's capital city, Sapporo.  Of course, towns all over Hokkaido hold mini snow festivals in their locations, too, but they are smaller and more difficult to get to.  This was a great trip, but memorable both for good and bad.

Let's start with the bad.  Our flight from Tokyo arrived in the early evening.  By the time we arrived at our lodging, which we rented on Air BNB, it was about 6pm, already dark.  Sapporo in winter is cold, much like Boston, and our apartment did not have a working heater.  Long story short, after a lot of intense and frustrating conversations with the land lord, who was surprised that we would want an apartment with a working heater, and after a staff person tried to fix the heater for a couple of hours, we decided to pack up our kids (who were at this point in pajamas) and hike through the snow to a nearby hotel (with a working heater) to spend our vacation.  This turned out to be a great move.  And it turns out that kids behave and sleep much better in warm rooms rather than in rooms where you can see your own breathe due to the cold.

TSUDOME

Unfortunately, not a great start to our trip, but it got much better.  For our first day of the snow festival, we spent the entire day at the Tsudome site, which the kids LOVED.  In fact, before we even made it to the site, we made an impromptu stop in a snow field for a snow fight.  

Tsudome's main attractions were snow activities: sledding, tubing, snow rafting, mini skis, snow fort making, snow slides, etc.  It was great fun, and our girls had a blast.  What made it even more fun was that we met up with our good friends the Nielsons, who were also in Sapporo for the snow festival.

Elli surprised us and was not only brave enough to do the tubing on her own, she also went down a zipline with her friend Audrey.  Looks like her courage is beginning to recover from last year's Tower of Terror debacle (although she still refuses to go in glass front elevators). 

Hidden ice bump at the end that really only non-kids feel!!

Maya was cold, poor thing.  :( 

Chocolate covered bananas to finish up!

SUSUKINO

After Tsudome, we ended the day by checking out the Susukino site.  One of the central attractions of this area was the ice sculpting.  We got there right when many of the artists were starting their sculpting.  It was fascinating to watch.  The following morning, we went back to see the completed artworks, and we were impressed with the results. 

We enjoyed being cheesy!

For you Jenny:  Muy Muy Kyu

OTARU

After Susukino, we took a small train ride to a outlying town called Otaru to check it out.  One of Otaru's main attractions is a walking area right beside a canal that has lots of snow candles and sculptures.  At night, it is very atmospheric, romantic, and peaceful (if you happen to have left your kids at home, which we didn't…so…yeah).

One funny anecdote.  The shops all over the city had snow men and snow women in front that they had built.  In front of many of these snow folks, we saw a sign that read "Attention: Snowman will break easily!! It is very annoying!! Do not be naughty!! Do not sit down!! Do not climb the snowy mountain!!"  We somehow resisted the temptation and did not climb the snowy mountains.  We however didn't know this hands off approach with the first snow people we saw, but the old man yelling and waving his arms at us, quickly let us realize our mistake.  Luckily we got a picture first.

Colonel Sanders saved us from the cold toward the end of the night! 

ODORI

Our final full day in Sapporo, we spent most of it at the largest of the festival sites, Odori.  The site is located along 10-12 blocks of Sapporo's main boulevard and had massive snow sculptures and events.  For example, the first one we came across was a massive ski and snowboard jump with periodic performances, which were awesome to watch.

The site is also famous for 3-4 massive massive snow sculptures, all the size of buildings.  At night, they put on light shows at each location, which were really neat.  When we went, it was too cold and snowing too hard for us to try to take pictures or videos of the sites at night, but here are the scenes during the day. 

This one did a whole moving train mini movie at night! 

After spending the morning at Odori, we took a break and walked to a nearby mall full of boutique craft shops and interesting stores, with was perfect timing because a blizzard was just moving in.  While there, we came across people dressed as the snow princess there.  Elli and Sienna were thrilled to take a picture with one of them.  Reluctantly, we braved the outdoors one last time to visit Odori at night, which was worthwhile although very cold.  Here are a couple pics other people took of the night projections so you have an idea of what they were.

The projections were like mini 5 minute movies

Almost every night, after we made it back to our hotel, we took advantage of the large and really nice onsen at our hotel.  For those who are not familiar with onsens, they are large bathing areas often filled with natural hot spring water.  They also function as a public bath house.  For most Americans, going to an onsen is a bit awkward: you have to shower on a small stool before going into a large communal bath, all the while completely in the nude in front of a bunch of Asian strangers.  Even though they separate male and female onsens, it's still uncomfortable.  However, after freezing most of the day, I quickly overcame my hesitations and by the end of our time in Sapporo, I was fully comfortable in the onsen.  Heather took Sienna and Elli to the onsen twice, and they LOVED it.  So this trip in particular definitely made us onsen people.

Finally, on the way home, we got a final treat by being able to fly on a Pikachu pokeman themed plane.  Due to the constant cold and snow and being outside all day long, this trip was probably the most challenging one we've ever done with our kids.  There were plenty of meltdowns and frustrations.  But even despite it all, it was a great trip.  One we would recommend to anyone.