Sapporo Snow Festival 2003

For those not acquainted with the term "matsuri", it means "festival" and Japan has a shit-load of them. In fact, I dare say on any given day of the year, somebody, somewhere is asleep in a gutter because of a local matsuri.

Apparently Sapporo's Yuki Matsuri or Snow Festival is one of, if not the most, famous matsuri in Japan (and that's a big call). For Matt and I it was something of a pilgrimage, one of the major events we wanted to see in Japan. I started planning the trip in July last year and even then most accommodation was fully booked. The term "matsuri" incites frenzy into the most docile of Japanese and if the matsuri is a big one, they flock to it with migratory madness.

I could open a thesaurus right now and give you a tome of superlatives that describe how f"@#$ing awesome the Snow Festival was, but I won't. Because:

1) I am abominably lazy;
2) I was downing painkillers like a Mexican throws back tequila so my rather blissful perspective may have been slightly, ahem, skewed; and
3) it was so good you really just had to be there. Which you weren't, so here are some pictures.

The background:
Yuki Matsuri began in 1950 when a bunch of high school students built six snow statues in the heart of Sapporo. 54 years later, the Snow Festival has expanded to showcase literally hundreds of sculptures made from both ice and snow, dispersed over three major sites in downtown Sapporo. On the day we arrived it was minus 9 degrees and snowing a gale, a walk in the park for most North Americans, but for a couple of antipodean blouses, it was colder than a nun's tittie. Even so, by the third day, the mercury had reached a staggering 2 degrees and bits had started to fall off the ice sculptures (nothing vital - just antlers and legs...).

Aside from the obvious aesthetic beauty of the sculptures and the ingenuity of the lighting used to highlight them of an evening, were the sheer logistics of the construction. So complex were some of the bigger statues (made entirely from snow and ice), that 100 members of Japan's Self-Defence Force were contracted for a month to build one. The Japanese army may not deem their own country's protection as priority, but you sure as hell cannot question their architectural artistry.

We wandered around each of the sites for three days, eating yatai food (if anyone offers you a deep fried potato doughnut, do yourself a favour and order six), trying not to gape in awe but nevertheless managing to slobber all over the statues, when an odd conundrum presented itself.....

there. was. not. one. hello. kitty. statue. not. one.

Sapporo

Snow Festivals aside, Sapporo itself is a funky city. Firstly, in the winter its a frozen wonderland; the roads are permanently drenched in snow and there's nothing more satisfying than seeing a Japanese filly in stilletto heels go arse over tit on the icy roads. Unfortunately, we didn't see any of them do that.

What we did see in Susukino, the entertainment red-light district of Sapporo (also one of the major Yuki Matsuri sites) was a rather prominent poster advertising a comically euphemistic "soapland", touting the virtues of high-school-aged "fillies". The "is it funny or fucked up?" paradox reared its ugly head just long enough for me to find my camera.

If you happen to mention that you are going to Sapporo, the Japanese will inevitably swoon; "Oh, Sapporo is famous for ramen. You must try the ramen." (they will also say this if you mention Fukuoka, Kyoto, Yokahama and Kumamoto). So we tried the ramen in "Ramen Alley", not surprisingly, one of the most famous places for ramen in all of Japan. The ramen was good. It was ramen. How good can noodles and pork in a milky broth get??? Our Japanese friends were happy with us, however, and, in the end, isn't that what is most important?