Hokkaido Yuki Matsuri

So after almost 2 years of hard work, stress, sleepless nights and god knows what else I’ve finally managed to get me some data I can work with. This of course means I’m now elbow deep in data analysis. A lot less stressful than experiments for sure but also a lot less fun. It’s repetitive, it’s boring and, thanks to the ambiguity of the technique I’m working with, seemingly never ending. But at least I have something I can work with.

Data analysis does however come with some benefits though. Almost all the analysis is computer based and as such can be done anywhere. This means I can do the unthinkable and…take a holiday mid-week. I know I know it’s very out of character and I’m pretty sure very un Japanese but hey, I’m not Japanese and neither is my boss so I managed to get away with.

So what prompted the desire to take a bit of a break, apart from being fully done in by several months of hard experiments? Well I’ll tell you. With my departure immanent, albeit not as soon as I was thinking it would be, I’ve been taking every opportunity to explore further afield whilst I’m in Japan. With that I decided to head out to the northern most reaches of Japan, Hokkaido.

The northern Island of Japan is famous for several things. Its natural beauty in any season is lorded by many of those on the mainland, its low population means that much of the natural landscape lays undisturbed. The same can also be said of its wildlife. Sadly this is best seen in the summer months and as we are in the middle of winter there wasn’t much chance of that. However winter also boasts some unnatural beauties of it’s own in the form of the Sapporo Yuki Matsuri (札幌雪祭り).

The snow festival is one of Japan’s biggest events seeing more than 2 million people flock to Hokkaido annually to bare witness. It was started by a few High school students building Snow statues in the centrally located Oodori park in the 1950’s and has grown and grown ever since. One of my favourite facts is that the local defence force is required to participate as a training exercise.

The festival runs for one week and whilst you can visit the sculptures anytime I definitely recommend heading down after dark. Sure it’s freaking cold (about -10­⁰C)

And yes the streets are crowded but the lighting is absolutely fabulous and really accentuates just how amazing these things are. Pictures do not do these things justice. The scale is just something else with entire buildings being reconstructed purely out of snow. I was pretty much in awe of everything I walked past, some of these sculptures were easily over 10 metres.

A little bit down the way is Sapporo’s central entertainment district, Susukino, where the streets are lined with spectacular ice sculptures. Again these really need to be seen at night as the pure ice glistens with the surrounding lighting. Once more I really can’t do these justice with pictures but I gave it a go anyway. If you go for the start of the festival you can also be treated to watching some of the sculptors hard at work with their chainsaws putting together some of the statues.

Of course no festival in Japan would be complete without Yatai’s, small portable food stores, and these were a bit of a treat. The other thing Hokkaido is famous for, besides nature and being mega cold, is food. It is one of Japan’s central agricultural hubs, being home to about a quarter of Japan’s arable land. Add to this the cold northern seas and that gives you great fish and veggies to boot.

Being that it is very cold Hokkaido food tends to be on the heartier side but when you are out in sub-zero temperatures that is pretty welcome. The miso ramen was amazing, a really nice blend of aka and shiro miso, and the curry soup is possibly the tastiest thing I’ve eaten in Japan. Sadly as it was only a 2 day stay I missed out on all the good seafood but as it was crab season I think I would have missed out anyway.

Due to the short nature of the trip there really wasn’t much chance for side trips unfortunately but I did manage one. Just a short journey from the centre, maybe 30 minutes by train and bus, is a small peak called Moiwa san. It’s not particularly but it does offer some amazing views out over Sapporo, as well as having a rather unique cable car journey to the summit. Sapporo doesn’t have many tall buildings so you can really see pretty far out across the area.

To be honest that is pretty much it. I probably spent as much time travelling out there as I actually did in Hokkaido but I’m really glad I went. My favourite moment? Well that is a bit private but one thing I found highly amusing was Panasonics stage at the Snow festival. They had cornered off an area to advertise their new range of air-conditioners, complete with Hawaiian scenery and a fake beach. Was it successful? I’ll let the thermometer do the talking.

Mata ne.