It is how cold?

The 64th annual Sapporo Snow Festival began on Tuesday the 5th, featuring 216 snow sculptures at three sites, including Odori Park, the main venue. Here you can see how warm it was when we went out to see the exhibit and yest that is the Hawaiian tourist booth and the temperature is in C not F (-4 C is equal to about 25 F and 25 C is 77 F). BTW it is the dry season here, lol. At one point my small camera stopped working and had to warm up before it would start again.

Just a few days before the opening of the Festival there was a 6.4 earthquake and then it rained. The rain melted parts of some of the smaller sculptures and many had to be repaired just hours before the judging.

Many of the public information signs were written in four languages - Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean but for the snow sculptures only Japanese was used. 

While we were out viewing the sculptures a snowstorm hit so we didn't get all of the names of who sculpted what so many of the pictures below don't have much information. The one really great thing that Sapporo has built was an underground passage way that went from the Sapporo Train station to Odori Park allowing us not to have to walk the whole way back to our hotel in the snowstorm. This passage way also connects the various subway lines as well as allows more shopping and pop-up galleries to exist.  

So our next Ice and Snow Festival is in Harbin, China which is even colder than Sapporo!! I wonder what they will suggest to eat to stay warm, hmmm?!? At the Sapporo festival I saw several people buying roasted ears of corn served in plastic bags which many people were using them to keep their hands warm. There was a booth selling candied nuts where the two guys preparing the nuts were from America. Guess they were trying to get a start in the Japanese market. There are several American restaurant chains here and I will blog about them in another post.

It was a balmy warm snowy, freezing day 

We all remember Ultraman, right?!?!

Wat Benchamabophit

Brushing off the new snow, good luck with keeping up with the snow as it snowed a foot on this day

A close-up to show the detail of the Thai sculpture.

The National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall 

Great to be so cool!

Kabuki-za in Ginza is the principal theater in Tokyo for the traditional Kabuki dramas

This was the US Navy's entry

Yep, it must be funny to see all of the freezing people

 

No idea why a stomach was sculpted.

Oregonians Wild Ride - Portland is a Sister city to Sapporo

  

There are chains on the wheels and the other two wheelchairs have skis instead of wheels

  

One of the many ubiquitous vending machines in Japan 

Adding some touch-ups to the Finnish entry.

One of the sculptures that required some repairs - Bali

Hey, look it is my old employer.

Here is an underground passage way between our hotel and Odori Park. One of the best ways to get around.

And after a cold day which plastic dinner should I have?