SAPPORO SNOW FESTIVAL

2 Feb- 4 Feb
My seniors (senpai) told us that there will be many many many people at the Sapporo Snow Festival. It’s a very popular event in Japan so apart from international travelers, expect to see many domestic Japanese travelers as well. Almost everybody in my office decided to head up to Sapporo the week before the festival starts as most of the snow sculptures would have already been completed. We took the overnight ferry from Hach and alighted at Tomakomai, then a bus to Sapporo train station.When we reached Sapporo, I joined Gerard, Jaslyn & Felicia to sight-see. Plus l have arranged to meet Roslynn later in the day.
So we went to Odori Park to look at the snow sculptures. To our disappointment, many of the snow sculptures have yet to be completed. This may be due to the lack of snow this year. Previous years, there is always heavy snow but this year, strangely, it did not snow as much, even in Hokkaido. It's what the Japanese call [暖冬] aka"warm winter".
Took some good shots though. See? There are so many different characters!
It's a pity that we could not see all the completed sculptures... Usually by this time, they would have completed almost all the sculptures. Well, what to do? Nvm lah, just enjoy what we could see! After looking at the snow sculptures and ice sculptures, went for dinner at a Ghenghis Khan restaurant. It was great! Really suited for winter! Yummy & warm!
After that I stayed overnight at Ros' place for the night. The next morning, I had to go through a blizzard to get to the subway train station. From there I had to take a subway to Sappporo station then catch the highway bus back to Tomakomai. Unfortunately, because of the blizzard in the morn, the bus took a longer time to reach Tomakomai train station. Then from Tomakomai station, Gerard, Jaslyn, Veronica & I had to grab a taxi to bring us to Tomakomai ferry terminal. We were practically running like mad ...Luckily we managed to catch our ferry back to Hach. By the time we reached, it was close to dinner time, so Gerard, Jaslyn & I had dinner at Lapia and they stayed over in my apartment for the night.