The Sapporo Snow Festival is probably better known for its ice sculptures, but I was in the snow sculpture area most of the time (and taking pictures of the snow ones was easier) so... the following are pictures I took on Sunday the 12th in Odori Park.
Anyway, on Sunday afternoon the JETs on the "two-days-off-from-school" trip (including me, Anne, Drew, and Julia) took the bus back to Tomokomai port to catch the 7 PM ferry back to Sendai. We happened to be on a different ferry than the one we had ridden on the way up. The second ferry was pretty similar except that the color-scheme was more vibrant, it had a karaoke room instead of a mini-theater, and we were placed in a smaller room since there were only about 15 of us. The room we were in was quite different from the one on the ride up; it was "tatami-style," so there were no bunk beds, in fact there were no beds at all! We all had futons that were much narrower than the one I use in my apartment. I bet the futon-mattresses were no more than 50 cm across (about 20")! It was a bit odd sleeping on the floor on a moving boat but I managed to get to sleep somehow... The ride itself was much rougher than the ride up had been as well since there was a snow storm coming in (or perhaps "going out"... I'm not sure which).
But despite the weather we arrived in Sendai Port safely on Monday around 10 AM. Driving home that time was easy since everyone else was at work; we even had time to stop at the grocery store and at the bank. It was a bit hard waking up on Tuesday morning to go to work since we were still very tired from the trip but I'm happy to say that we managed to hold on! I'm glad I went on the trip to Hokkaido, it was a lot of fun and it was a nice break from the regular school schedule.
In other news my father is coming to visit at the end of next month when I have a week and a half off at the start of the school year (in Japan the school year ends in March and starts in April). I'm really looking forward to his visit!
I believe this was a sculpture of Osaka Castle, though it was much smaller than the original it was still very tall, approximately 35 feet (10.6 m) by my estimate.
There were at least 100 snow sculptures all together, most were 7-12 feet (2 m - 3.6 m) tall. This sculpture of Jaws was around 7 feet (with the base block included).
This year is a Year of the Dragon according to the Chinese calendar so many of the sculptures incorporated dragons like this intricate one above.
Another massive snow building was a replica of the Taj Mahal in India. Sapporo is a bit more culturally diverse than much of Japan (Anne says it's because back in the day sea ports in Hokkaido were some of the first ones opened to foreigners). Hokkaido was also home to the native Ainu people who were more related to some tribes in Russia than to groups on Honshu (Japan's largest island).
One section of the festival had snow sculptures created by groups from Sapporo's sister cities and also sculptures made by foreign teams in general. This baby turtle was made by a team from Malaysia!
Of course there were many anime, manga, and video game related works as well. This gigantic sculpture shows characters from Toriko (a story about a man seeking the ultimate ingredients for cooking with many battles ensuing) on the left and One Piece (a story about treasure-hunting super-powered pirates) on the right. One Piece is particularly popular among my elementary and middle school students; its manga has gone for 657 chapters and its anime has run for 536 episodes as of this post.
Anyway, on Sunday afternoon the JETs on the "two-days-off-from-school" trip (including me, Anne, Drew, and Julia) took the bus back to Tomokomai port to catch the 7 PM ferry back to Sendai. We happened to be on a different ferry than the one we had ridden on the way up. The second ferry was pretty similar except that the color-scheme was more vibrant, it had a karaoke room instead of a mini-theater, and we were placed in a smaller room since there were only about 15 of us. The room we were in was quite different from the one on the ride up; it was "tatami-style," so there were no bunk beds, in fact there were no beds at all! We all had futons that were much narrower than the one I use in my apartment. I bet the futon-mattresses were no more than 50 cm across (about 20")! It was a bit odd sleeping on the floor on a moving boat but I managed to get to sleep somehow... The ride itself was much rougher than the ride up had been as well since there was a snow storm coming in (or perhaps "going out"... I'm not sure which).
But despite the weather we arrived in Sendai Port safely on Monday around 10 AM. Driving home that time was easy since everyone else was at work; we even had time to stop at the grocery store and at the bank. It was a bit hard waking up on Tuesday morning to go to work since we were still very tired from the trip but I'm happy to say that we managed to hold on! I'm glad I went on the trip to Hokkaido, it was a lot of fun and it was a nice break from the regular school schedule.
In other news my father is coming to visit at the end of next month when I have a week and a half off at the start of the school year (in Japan the school year ends in March and starts in April). I'm really looking forward to his visit!
No comments:
Post a Comment