Snow Festival

The Sapporo Snow Festival started 56 years ago as a snowman building contest

among local high schools and neighborhood associations. It has now escalated to

an international competition with corporate sponsorship, with some of the snow

sculptures as big as small office buildings.

Snow Sculpture

A few dozen countries and more than one hundred domestic organizations built snow

 sculptures for the festival. Many of the countries that entered the competition you

 would not associate with snow. This 15 meter sculpture of a dragon and a cat was

done by Taiwan.

Disney

Donald Duck was there.

Local School Kids

These third graders from the local elementary school were told to see how many

signatures they could collect from foreigners attending the show.

Light Show

Many of the structures are illuminated by a continuously changing light show

accompanied by blaring rock music. It all makes for great photographs.

City Hall

Some of the structures are so big you would think they would require a building permit.

This is an ice sculpture of a city hall in Germany.

Palace

Not to be outdone, the Norwegians put up a palace.

Nagoya Castle

But the most spectacular of all was a gigantic snow sculpture of Nagoya castle built

by the Japan Self-Defense Force. They brought in 7000 trucks of snow and mobilized

hundreds of soldiers to put it up. This caused an outrage with the public who thought

their military should be doing something more productive. As a result, the army agreed

to pull out of next year's competition. However, this tour group from Nagoya was quite

proud of the display and had their picture taken in front of it.

Idol

This snow sculpture of a Korean idol was very popular with the young girls.

Slide

A snow slide made a big hit with the little kids.

Northern Hospitality

We were taken out to dinner by Sapporo residents Drs. Taniguchi, Fusagawa and

Takahashi. The fish was delicious and the hospitality great.