Snow Festival!

I apologize to those of you who have been following our blog for the delay. I know its April now, but we will look back to February and tell you about some of the trips we took. Every year in Sapporo there is a snow festival in February. This year the festival was from Feb. 5-11. Before the opening day of the festival, artists come to Sapporo to carve magnificent sculptures out of packed snow and ice. These masterpieces line the center of Odori Park in downtown Sapporo.

Ed and I stayed at the Hotel Gracery, a modern hotel near the train station. This was our first experience in a Japanese hotel and all in all it was a pretty good one. The room was small but functional, the bathroom mirror had a defogger built in (you have to have a steamed up mirror to appreciate the brilliance of this!), and we were close to all the sights. The breakfast included traditional Japanese and traditional Western style foods. The first morning we opted for the Western style breakfast, but I decided to be adventurous the second morning and go for some salmon, rice, dumplings, and other Japanese morning foods.

We met up with a friend of ours at the airport and on the first night in Sapporo we went to dinner with him at the Sapporo Beer Garden. You would have to visit to appreciate the scene as we walked in...imagine a large redbrick warehouse style building filled with smoke and the smell of grilled meat...every man's dream right!? The hot item on the menu was all you can eat lamb and veggies plus all you can drink Sapporo beer for 3500 yen (so about 35 bucks). Well, this may not be a good deal for light eating Japanese, but for three hungry Americans it was a steal! After eating about an entire lamb and more than our fair share of beer, we headed to Odori Park to see the ice sculptures at night.

After viewing the sculptures, we made friends with a Japanese vendor in a cow hat and bought some hot beer with honey from his friend. This may sound like a weird drink, but after walking around on snow and ice in the freezing weather it really tasted good and warmed us right up.

On our last day in Sapporo we visited the old government building, which is modeled after the Maryland and Massachusetts State Houses. Then we went back to the park one last time and watched some snowboarders jump off a ramp for awhile before we had to get to the train station to head for the airport.

Sapporo is the major city on the northern island of Hokkaido and we had fun, but still have much of that island to explore. It is a big change from the crowded and busy Tokyo area. Hokkaido is full of national parks, mountains, wetlands, and other places of natural beauty so we would like to go back when the weather is warmer to visit some of these locations.