Blog Archives

Sapporo Snow Festival is Approaching

It’s that cold season of the year again and people are looking forward to go skiing and snow-boarding. Most of the travel bureaus in Tokyo are advertising packages to northern and north-eastern Japan. With unusually freezing temperatures sometimes going below zero even in the capital Tokyo, this season is going to be great for skii lovers and also for snow and ice sculptors!

A special event in the winter calendar here in Japan and maybe all over the world is the “Sapporo Snow Festival” (雪祭り). If you are planning to go to Sapporo to see the event, you should reserve the air tickets and hotel accommodation well in advance to save money and to find a good hotel close to the festival site. Two or three month advance bookings will give you return air fare from Haneda + Hotel B&B for three nights for approx. 30,000 JPY. For those of you who are interested in seeing the sculptors in action, I recommend going to Sapporo couple of days before the festival opens in the first week of February. The best vantage point to see all sculptures is the Sapporo TV tower. The evening light up at the festival site creates an unearthly aura and that’s when you have to be there to witness the best of the season.

In day time you may consider visiting the Sapporo beer museum, open market and surely the “Shiroi Koibito Park” where you will see how Ishiya chocolate factory makes its flagship product. Some of the photos I took in my visit there last February are posted below.