Friday, February 19, 2010

Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival) In Sapporo




Last week we went to the annual snow sculpture festival in Sapporo called Yuki Matsuri.  There were several massive (like 3-40 feet tall!!) sculptures made out of snow and a bunch of 8-10 foot ice sculptures carved out of clear ice.  They have this festival every year in Sapporo and the different sculptures are sponsored by different companies and organizations.  Disney does one every year (this years was a little lame, just Micky and Minny).  The coolest one by far was the one sponsored by the Asahiyama Zoo (its in the other big city in Hokkaido, Asahikawa).  This sculpture had an awesome leopard that looked really scary, a polar bear and two cubs, a huge orangutan, and a bunch of other stuff.  They looked amazing and it was not hard to fantasize about them coming to life and running loose all over the park (I watch too many movies).  We also saw some live music by a corny Japanese boy band.  They did some N’snyce covers and some other lame stuff.  Chrissy loved it though.  They also had a lot of tasty food in an outdoor international food court.  Every country had a booth and a few shared.  Don’t ask me how they go together but Mexico and Greece teamed up together.  I could see Mexico and Spain or something but Greece??

We opened the day by shopping at COSTCO with our buddy Dave and we bought another trunkfull of staple products and some flavors from home: peanut butter, cranberries, pasta, tortilla chips and salsa, a package of hot dogs (you can make fun, its alright), kosher dill pickles, mixed nuts, hash brown patties, granola cereal, beer, and shampoo (smells fruity but don’t eat it).

We ate some great ramen in a place called Ramen Alley- they have a million ramen shops one after the other on either side of a four foot wide alley.  It was tough deciding which one to eat at but we were happy with our choice. 

All in all it was a really fun day.  We walked around a lot in the snow and had a lot of laughs.  Look out for Matsui getting eaten by Godzilla in the slide show- I loved it.

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