2007 Sapporo Snow Festival - Part 2

After dinner we trekked to Odori Park to enjoy the "Previewing" of the Snow and Ice Festival. Most of the sculptures were completed and everything was lit up for the spectators to enjoy! There were hundreds of ice sculptures lining the streets - everything from peacocks to motorcycles to a likeness of the Emperor of Japan! The next sight we came to were hundreds of snow sculptures - including everything from Sponge Bob to Ramen Noodles.

THEN, by far the most impressive of all the attractions were the professional snow sculptures made by Japan's National Defense force. It's hard to even describe how fantastic these were! First of all, the city brings in thousands of loads of snow from the surrounding area for the event. It takes several weeks and thousands of workers to complete these gigantic creations. The theme for this year was "Places Around the World." The 6 main sculptures in this category were each as big as a three story building - and had every last detail made out of snow. They had Disney's Magic Kingdom - along with larger-than-life sized figures of Minnie, Mickey, Lilo and Stitch. Next came a replica of a temple in Thailand - followed by a Chinese pagoda - and a ship en route to Antarctica, surrounded by arctic sea life. Hopefully you can get some idea of how massive and impressive they were by looking at the pictures! WOW! We spent almost 4 hours walking around and checking out all the snow and ice creations and we could have stayed longer - if our legs would have allowed us!

Before we headed home on Tuesday we went to one last site included in the snow festival. The area was mostly geared towards kids, but we enjoyed watching hundreds of children play in the snow and have fun together. We walked through a giant snow maze, ate grilled corn on the cob, and even got to make our very own baby snow man. How cute!