Hokkaido
Everyone says: you have to go to the Sapporo Snow Festival. Not being “wintery” folks, we went anyways.
Summary and Recommendations
Snow. Ice. Crowds.
I’m sure (based only on statistics) that most of Hokkaido is rural and full of farms. We mostly saw Sapporo, which looks a lot like most of the Tokyo surrounds…just with extra snow. Like, a lot extra.
- Get an airbnb. Our apartment was roomy and cost effective. Most hotels didn’t look roomy enough for a family of four for more than one night.
- Pack extra gloves and other warm weather gear - you will probably want to touch snow, thus wetting your gloves and negating their effectiveness.
- If you want to ski, plan ahead for transportation and lift tickets - that’s all I can say about that because we did not do so.
- Go ahead and fly Vanilla Air or whatever. We flew ANA (because I was nervous), but it was codeshare with some super cheap airline. Also, some of my friends have flown the cheaper flights and lived…so there’s that. Save a few hundred dollars.
Our Trip
We spent a few days in and around Sapporo mostly. We planned our trip to be right before the main snow festival, so we could see the finishing touches being put on sculptures and avoid the largest part of the tourist rush. I think our timing was good, but I’ve never gone at a different time.
We knew it would be snowy, to support a “snow festival” but we didn’t really expect so much. On most sidewalks, the snow shoveled out of the way was higher than our hip level.
We must have walked through the snow scupture paths in downtown Sapporo three or four times over the course of our days there, and I don’t know for sure if we saw all of them. Some sculptures were so big as to include a stage within the art. The pictures really don’t capture what it is like. It wasn’t all just looking at snow art anyways. There were shows - music and drama. There were places to participate in ice skating or snow throwing. My favorite show was a ski jump demonstration. Yes, a ski ramp right in the downtown park. And…there were tons of food stalls.
In addition to all of the main snow sculptures, we saw the ice sculptures near Susukino (a different part of downtown), more snow sculptures unveiled at Odari park (like 2 miles of them), took a tour at Asahi brewery (the only one within Sapporo city limits), and took the rope way and mini cable car ups to the top of Moiwayama (Mt Moiwa). American tip: If you are going to the Asahi brewery, you can eat at McDonalds…just a few blocks away. :fries:
Perhaps the neatest place we went was not in Sapporo at all. We took the train out to Otaru. The only must do that I have for people heading to the Sapporo Snow Festival is to leave and go to Otaru. The easiest way to get there is the JR Hakodate Main Line ~ 650 yen and 40 minutes each way. Note: as it gets late, the trains are fewer and farther between. Just get on a local and get going - it doesn’t take too much longer than an express. We got to Otaru mid-afternoon and walked through the sculptures during the light. In Otaru, the presentation is all about light through snow and ice, so light makes a huge difference. I liked seeing things before and after dark.
