Kristi in Japan: Sapporo Snow Festival

So, despite a long workweek, Rosalind and I flew off to Sapporo on Friday for the 57th Annual Sapporo Snow Festival. The flight from Niigata to Hokkaido took a mere hour and after a subsequent train and bus, we met up with Johanna, Beth, and Joel at our hotel. Friday night was quiet, with a little strolling around Sapporo and a surprisingly nice Italian dinner. Sapporo seems like a really fun city, with almost 2 million people and a lot of neat attractions to its name. I'm not sure if I could deal with the cold there though. Hokkaido is colder than Niigata (but gets less snow for the same reason) - and wow does a degree or two make a difference when you're already below freezing. Brrr.

So, I'm not going to say a lot, except that it was *awesome* and *amazing* and totally worth the time/money/shivering. The snow and ice sculptures were truly astounding, both in quality and quantity. We saw giant replicas of buildings, a massive Buddha, several Totoros, Pikachu, Domo-kun, R2-D2, Wallace and Gromit, the Chronicles of Narnia, a Bailey's bar and a karaoke booth made of solid ice, fish encased in an ice palace, dragons, mermaids, phoenixes, and God knows what else. I think I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves. I took over 200 and posted around 140, so definitely check out my Flickr set to see more, if you're interested.