"Queen's Head of Taiwan" & Pingxi District in Taiwan"
Episode of Sapporo Snow Festival
After 3 hours drive from the Sounkyo Kanko Hotel, our tour bus arrived in Sapporo. The bus stopped near Sapporo TV tower. Then we got off from the tour bus and walked to the Sapporo TV tower together. From that time, we had 3 hours free time for the snow festival.
For Tomo & Chouchou, it was a dream to come to the snow festival in Hokkaido, so we were so thrilled to approach to the main venue.
First we saw ice sculptures of Hokkaido Shinkansen near the entrance of main venue. Shinkansen is the Japanese high-speed railway. 2016 is the opening year of Hokkaido Shinkansen. So it was memorial ice sculpture for 2016.
There were many small food stands, which is called "Yatai in Japanese, in the main venue of Sapporo Snow Festival. Tomo & Chouchou ate Hotate-man (=scallop buns) and Ton-Chimaki (=steamed sticky rice with pork wrapped in bamboo leaf).
We were also interested in Susukino area where we can see many ice sculptures.
So we stopped visiting main area for a while, then headed to Susukino area. We were very surprised to see that all the ice sculptures lined up in the middle of the car road! We quickly saw the ice sculptures of Susukino area, then we went back to the main area.
After going back to main area, we saw many snow statues. Especially, a huge snow sculpture at STV area, Shingeki no Kyojin in 2016, was amazing!
We were so surprised to see such a huge snow sculpture! We also found a big ice sculpture at Mainichi Ice Area, Queen's Head of Taiwan & Pingxi District in Taiwan (where we fry lanterns). We found another snow sculpture in HSBC Macau area, the Ruins of St.Paul's in Macau, China. These are 3 big sculptures of Sapporo Snow Festival in 2016.
Afterwards we saw many snow sculptures. They were mostly the people who became famous in 2016 or popular animation characters such as rugby player Goromaru, Naoki Matayoshi who got Akutagawa award, a comedian Tonikaku Akarui Yasumura, Minions, Star Wars, Snoopy, and Funasshi and so on.
Personally we liked a family snow sculpture which had very Japanese taste.
As a result, 3 hours free time was short to see all the things of the Sapporo snow festival. At the end, we had to run to be in meeting time. Even though, we wanted to see the Sapporo Clock Tower. So we ran to the Sapporo Clock Tower and quickly took some photos.
Travel agency, Club tourism, gave us two tickets which we could take a rest in the Sapporo TV Tower. However we had no time to take a rest there.
Anyway we could enjoyed Sapporo Snow Festiva a lot.
Tomo & Chouchou's advice for Sapporo Snow Festival
There are so many things to see and many local foods to taste. It was very crowded. So you had better quickly decide where to go and what to eat. However if you prefer not to hurry, you had better spend one full day for Sapporo Snow Festival from the afternoon to the night.
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Travel Itinerary of Hokkaido Snow Festival tour Tomo&Chouchou joined
Travel agent：Club Tourism International Inc.
Date: Feb in 2016 (2 nights 3 days)
1st day: Arrive at Wakkanai airport ⇒ Scallop lunch at Wakkanai station which has northernmost railroad track ⇒ Snow activities such as snow rafting, snow mobile, snow tube at Soya Fureai Park (Japanese: Soya Fureai Koen, 宗谷ふれあい公園） ⇒ Visit Cape Sōya (Japanese: Sōya-Misaki, 宗谷岬), where is the northernmost point of Japan. Visit Drift Ice Hall too. ⇒ Watch Russian musical ensemble at Wakkanai Sakhalin Hall (Japanese: Wakkanai Sakhalin Kan, 稚内サハリン館) ⇒
Stay at Hotel Meguma in Wakkanai. Enjoy Wakkanai hot spring and Soya crab dinner course.
2nd day: Visit Lake Kutcharo (Japanese: Kutcharo-ko, クッチャロ湖) in Hamatombetsu (浜頓別). ⇒ Go to Cape Drift Ice / Cape Ryuhyo (Japanese: Ryuhyo-misaki, 流氷岬) in Monbetsu (紋別). Bord on the drift ice crusher "Garinko Ⅱ". ⇒ Stay at Sounkyo Kankou Hotel (層雲峡観光ホテル). Enjoy 41th Sounkyo Ice Waterfall Festival at night.
3rd day: Enjoy snow sculpture and ice sculpture of 67th Sapporo Snow Festival. ⇒ Eat Sapporo Ramen (Japanese: ラーメン, which is a Japanese noodle soup) at New Chitose Airport Terminal (Japanese: Shin Chitose Kuko, 新千歳空港) ⇒ Fly back to go home.
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Travel review of Hokkaido Snow Festival group tour
Tomo & Chouchou had dreamed of traveling to the snow festival in Hokkaido. Our dream came true with this tour!
There are so many snow festivals in Hokkaido. Sapporo Snow Festival is the most famous one. With this tour, we could go to two festivals "Sapporo Snow Festival" and "Sounkyo Hyobaku Festival". Normally it costs a lot to travel to Hokkaido during snow festival season. With this group tour, we could travel at a relatively reasonable price. So we were very lucky. We could also visit the northernmost point of Japan and board the drift ice crusher. Even though we couldn't see the drift ice, 2016 was not so enough cold to see the drift ice, it was enjoyable to look for the drift ice. All the foods that we ate were good. We were really satisfied with this tour.
Relating article
other winter festivals in the world
* Sounkyo Hyobaku (Ice Waterfall) Festival in Hokkaido, Japan
* Montreal Snow Festival, Canada
* Quebec Winter Carnival, Canada
* Winterlude & Rideau Canal Skateway in Ottawa, Canada
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