Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival) in Sapporo

(Editor's Note: Lisa wrote most of this entry. I filled in some of the blanks--Paul.)
With generous Christmas gifts of several members of our families (you know who you are!!) and some scheduling help from my supervisor Kurigami-sensei, Paul and I were able to take a trip to the city of Sapporo on the Northern most island of Hokkaido for the annual "Yuki Matsuri" or Snow Festival. This might be a good time to have a little geography lesson about Japan. Paul and I are living in Ito, Shizuoka, Japan. Looking at this map, find Mt. Fuji. Directly below Mt. Fuji, or Fuji-San as it is known here, there is a tiny peninsula called Izu (it is covered by the final A in NAGOYA) Ito is half way down the East side of the Izu. As you can see, we are about 120 km from Yokohama, 150 km from Tokyo and from Tokyo, a brief 75 minute flight to Sapporo.

This snow festival is something that I read about way before I ever thought about coming to Japan, so I was really excited that we were able to make it up there.
We met up with about 25 other JETs in Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. This airport is very nice and relatively empty as it only deals with domestic flights. After the short flight, we landed in Sapporo. By the time we got our luggage and made it to the train bound for our hotel, the Fates had graced us with the magic of Sapporo…

Soon enough, we arrived at our home for the next few days, the Sapporo Grand Hotel. This hotel is one of the nicest in the city, and has a very Western feel to it. We went to our rooms, freshened up a bit and headed out to get a snack and see some snow sculptures.

Now, we made the journey to Sapporo for Yuki Matsuri, but the town is famous for several other things including ramen, fresh seafood (especially crabs), Sapporo Beer, and skiing. And we only had three days to do it all!!!

Since we were in Sapporo several days before the Yuki Matsuri actually began, we were lucky enough to see the “behind the scenes” of the construction of these amazing statues. In the following video, you can see the bulldozers, scaffolding, etc…

After our “removal” from Odori Park, we headed back to our hotel to meet up with the group and head to our dinner reservation. Our organizer, Grace, had made arrangements for us to eat at the Sapporo Beer Garden. Sapporo is quite well known for its namesake beer. In the mid 1800’s some German brewmasters came over and found wild hops growing on Hokkaido. The Duetsch taught the Japanese the secrets of brewing and the rest is history. The brewery now includes a museum and restaurant in the "Genghis Kahn" style featuring “nomi hodai” or all you can drink Sapporo beer and "tabehodai". which means all you can eat. Since it's Genghis Kahn style, the all you can eat is lamb or mutton. With all that alcohol and meat, is it really surprising that things get out of hand…

We spent the day Saturday seeing as many of Sapporo’s finest sights as possible. Since Sapporo was planned out by Americans post WWII, the city is laid out in a grid pattern that makes walking around a breeze compared to the ancient Japanese city plans commonly found in Tokyo and other major cities.

First stop, Observatory 38. This is the home of JapanRail's offices in Sapporo.

After leaving the JR tower, we headed to the fish market...
Here's a photo of our gang with one ofthe couples that runs a booth at the market:

The Sapporo Fish Market is world famous for fresh seafood, but the piece de resistance is the enormous crabs they have here (Mel's friend, Van, is holding one in the photo). They sell for anywhere between 2500 and 7500 Yen per crab. That's around 25 to 75 U.S. Dollars! Fortunately for us, the vendors are wonderfully nice, and easy with the free samples. The crab is delicious, and if I had 75 bucks to blow on a special dinner, I would definitely pick up one of these beauties. Here's a clip of how they look before they hit the boiling pot.

Next stop, Ramen Alley.
Ramen Alley is a really unique place in Sapporo. Granted, you can't swing a dead cat in Japan without hitting a ramen shop, but here in Sapporo, there are around 50 of them all packed into one little street. Each region of Japan has its own spin on ramen, and Sapporo's style involves miso (fermented bean paste--it tastes much better than it sounds), corn, and butter, along with that delicious crab meat. Here's a clip that demonstrates a master's craft for ramen:

Later, we wandered into a sporting goods store to buy some gear for skiing the next day and then stopped back at the brewery to see the museum and to do the tour. Here are a few shots of our stroll through that wonderful outpost of hoppy, Germanic goodness:









Day 2 in Sapporo was our big ski trip. Let me just get in a plug here for Japanese organization. We rented our skiis and other equipment at the hotel's front desk. By mid afternoon on day 1, the skiis were delivered so we could try on the boots. On the morning of our ski trip, the equipment was neatly stacked for us. We took it and walked a couple blocks to the bus stop, and our adventure began. I never felt so at ease with a tour service. Here's a documentary clip of our big day at Teine Skiing resort. It was Paul's first time skiing since he was 8 years old, and I was really proud of how much he learned in one day. But then, he did have an awesome teacher!

On our last day in sapporo, we walked around to take in some of the nearly completed snow and ice sculptures. Here are a couple of Paul's favorites:

It was really cool how they had made sculptures out of seafood frozen in ice! There were about 5 city blocks' worth of these types of sculptures along one of the main streets in Sapporo. This trip turned out to be worth every penny, and we brought back memories that will last a lifetime.