Should be studying for tomorrow’s test right now so no time to proof read so beware of typos and enjoy!

Day 1 (Friday February 3, 2006)

As I’m typing this, its 4:17pm and I’m sitting on JAL Flight 2507, 37,500 ft. above sea level on way to Sapporo. We’re scheduled to land at 5pm. The weather there is –9 C with light snow!! So far I think this has probably been the best flight I’ve ever been on. But, lets start from the beginning…

Got up around 7:15am so that I could get in a little more studying before this morning’s test. I had two homework assignments that are due on Monday that I was going to attempt to get done before we left, but because one of them was a 3 paragraph composition in which I had to analyze bar and pie graphs based on the study habits of Japanese college students, I knew there was no chance they’d get done before I left. Finished packing up all my stuff and 20 minutes early walked over to the large conference room, where I’d be taking my test. Brian was there early because of his home stay, so we chatted a bit and eventually the tests got passed out. I feel pretty confident about how I did on this test, but I also felt confident on the last test as well, and it turned out that I did just as horrible as the first test. I’ll find out on Tuesday…..

After the test was over I practically ran back to my room and quickly cleaned up all the dirty dishes that I had sitting in the sink. My one carton of milk decided to sprout a leak so I also had to clean our my fridge, and took our my garbage so that I wouldn’t return to a stinky room. I had just enough time to toss the bags outside of my door before I had to run back to the large conference room for the Friday project, which this week was Kyogen (kind of like a comedic version of Noh). The Friday project was scheduled to be over at 11:15am, so that morning I had called a cab to have to come at 11:30am. I snuck in some of my Monday homework, and while we were watching a video and later given a demonstration on Kyogen, I was able to finish it up a little. Luckily, it ended at exactly 11:15am, which gave me enough time to run back to my room, rum my garbage out to the dumpsters, finish packing up my stuff, grab a snack, and go down to the lobby. On the way there I snagged Tim, and when we got down to the lobby we found the taxi driver wandering around looking for me (since I had given them my name). He even seemed a little pissed that he had to come in….we were all of 2 minutes later than 11:30am. Oh well. We jumped in the cab and were glad to be heading away from JCMU for a long weekend of snow, skiing, and fun. When we got to Hikone station a few minutes later, we went across the street to Al Plaza to grab some McDonalds for our 2+ hour journey to Osaka-Kansai Airport. We were able to make it on the 12pm rapid with no problems, and even met up with a student from JCMU who is in 4th year and lives in Kyoto.

The next 2 hours and 40 minutes were pretty uneventful, and we arrived at Kansai Airport with plenty of time to spare. Checking in was basically the same as the US, except that they didn’t even check our ID’s and they asked me what kind of seat I wanted, and I told them window. J Tim and I each checked a bag, and we were told (in English) what gate we needed to go to and that we just had to be there 15 minutes early. So, then we had 30 minutes to kill. We ended up just going to the gate and waiting. It surprised me that even though we were in the domestic departure area, all announcements were made in both Japanese and English (despite the fact that I think we were the only gaijins on the flight). 15 minutes before departure, we boarded the flight, and to my utter surprise, not only did I have a window seat, but it was an emergency exit row seat!!! I’ve never even been able to get one of these if I *ask*, so I guess maybe they just kinda looked us up and down at check-in and figured we were tall gaijins and needed some extra leg room. Well, thank you unnamed JAL employee. J Once settled into our seats, we were able to watch, on the television screens in the plane, a view from a camera on the front of the plane. We got to watch it as we were pushed onto the runway, taxied out to the end, and while take-off. Once in the air, the view switched to a camera on the underside of the plane, and then we got to watch the ground going by underneath us. Of all the US flights I’ve ever been on, they’ve never done anything like this. It was soooooooooo cool. They left it on the sky view for quite a while, and then after a while changed it to a segment of today’s news. When they allowed us to get our electronic devices out again, I played some games and started writing this blog entry.

(Several hours later…)

Well, now I’m finishing this day’s entry while sitting in our hotel room. The rest of the flight was incredibly smooth, probably one of the nicest flights I’ve ever been on. (One interesting contrast in service on Japanese airlines is there was a man sitting ahead of me who was asleep when the stewardess went by with drinks. Instead of waking him up or skipping him altogether, she put a little sticky note on the chair in front of him, so that he’d know when he woke up that he could still get a drink.) We were able to watch our plane landing from the nose cone camera, which was also very cool. We landed at New Chitose airport outside of Sapporo around 5pm. We could see a lot of snow on the ground, but when we got out of the plane it wasn’t really that cold. We picked up our bags and then immediately went down to the train station, where we got on a rapid train for Sapporo. 36 minutes later we were in Sapporo station, where we wandered into the tourist information center in order to ask about some discount tickets for skiing and the train ride to the ski resort. We ended up buying tickets for Kiroro Snow Park, since it was the largest ski resort close to Sapporo. We then got a few maps and some information about the snow festival, and then headed to the subway to get to our hotel. There were SO MANY people in the train station. More than I had seen at one point in all of my week in Tokyo. We got on our train and three stops later we were out and wandering around the snow covered streets trying to find our hotel. We eventually found it and then I had to tell them that actually we had a 2-bed room instead of a 1-bed room, which I felt pretty guilty about but eventually they brought out our room keys and our meal tickets for the free breakfasts that we get each day, and so we went up to find our room. As far as hotel rooms go, it was pretty normal, which made me happy since all I really wanted was a room with heat, a bed, and hopefully a TV. We dropped off our bags and then headed back out in the cold to find something to eat for dinner. We wandered around for way too long and kind of ended up in the adult entertainment part of town. Turning around and heading back into the now driving snow, we ducked into an interesting looking restaurant, which when we actually got inside we were a little worried because it looked like a pretty nice and expensive place. The first thing the waiter did when he walked over to us was set down this little appetizer plate with some pieces of raw salmon and a snail (or something like it) still in its shell. We attempted to order from a menu with no pictures and kanji we didn’t know, and after the waiter left I took a good, hard look at my snail for a good 5 minutes then decided I’d just eat it. Surprisingly it was actually quite tasty. When the food finally came out, it was luckily also good (despite the fact that I didn’t know what it was). Walking back through the snow, we got back to our hotel and settled in to watch some TV before deciding when to get up the next morning for skiing.

Day 2 (Saturday February 4, 2006):

Woke up at the crack of dawn (6:30am) to get ready to go to Kiroro Snow World. We had to get out of our room by 7am, to go down and check out the buffet breakfast, which turned out to be awwwwwesome. Scrambled eggs, bacon, potatoes, fresh fruit, miso soup, rice….and it was all very tasty. We got out of our hotel by 7:30am, and made it with plenty of time to spare to get on the 8:10am bus. It took us a while and a little effort to find where we had to board the bus, and at 8:10am it came and picked us up. We were supposed to get to Kiroro at 9:35am, but it turned out to be more like 10am. When we got there it was snowing pretty steadily, and there was at least 6 or 7 feet of snow on the ground outside of the ‘Mountain Center’. (We had read before getting here that there was some 390cm of snow on the ground at Kiroro.) Going into the main ski center, we exchanged our tickets for ski boots, skis and poles (of which I got a double take when I showed them my form with my shoe size on it). After getting our lift tickets, I just kind of followed Tim to one of the lifts, figuring that at the top there had to be a moderately easy run. Well, turned out there wasn’t. The only one to go down was a ‘red’, which in the Japanese system means intermediate. Well, I was completely not ready for something like that and it was hell trying to get back down to the bottom. This is the first time that I’ve skied in years, and I probably wiped out 3 times. It was really very unfun. When I finally got down to the bottom, I looked on the big map myself this time, and found that the big gondola had the longest beginner course of the whole resort. The ride up was a good 20 minutes, and as we climbed higher and higher it was starting to get windier and started snowing harder. Reading the top, the wind was blowing so hard that at points along the course on the way down, the wind actually stopped us from moving. While this second course was very easy and flat, at some points it was so flat that we had to almost practice our cross country skiing technique. It was actually *too* boring. So, 0 for 2 on the courses, when we finally got down to the bottom (it probably took us a good 40 minutes), we took a break to have some lunch (negi (green onion) ramen because we couldn’t read the kanji on any of the other kinds of ramen), and then we split up since I knew that I was only going to be able to handle the beginner courses and Tim is a way better skier than I. We made plans to meet up at 4pm, around the time that the park would close, and I decided to go back up on the large gondola and try one of the other easy courses. Immediately off the gondola, I had to take the same course as I had the time before, but then a little ways down it splits off into several over courses. There was a new course called the “Grand Line”, and while it was an intermediate course, I thought that maybe I’d be able to do it. Turns out I was COMPLETELY WRONG. The next 45 minutes were incredibly frustrating. I’d go about 10 feet and fall onto my ass. Then I’d go another 10 feet and I’d be flipping end over end. It was so steep that eventually I decided to just give up and slowly make my way down the steep parts of the route by walking. When I finally got down to the bottom I was about on the verge of just returning my skis and sitting the rest of the day out. The day so far had not been very enjoyable. I decided to go into the lodge, find some hot cocoa, and take a break before attempting to go back out again. Well, turns out they didn’t even serve hot cocoa!! L So instead I had a pop and a cream puff, and analyzed the courses at the resort to find something that make me feel like I was glad I had come all the way out here to ski. Eventually I found something with a max pitch of some 16 degrees (the ‘red’ courses had a max of 25). I took a 10 minute lift ride up, and took the plunge yet again. Luckily, this time, I did quite well and was actually starting to have a certain amount of fun. By the time I got back down to the bottom of the hill, it was 3:40pm and 5 minutes before the lifts would close. So I quick went back up the same lift, and then came down the same route again, and met up with Tim at the bottom of the hill at 4pm. It got darker a lot faster in Hokkaido than it does in the Kansai area, so we got all of about 5.5 hours of ski time in. I wish that I had been able to go down the same route a couple more times before Kiroro had closed. They offer night-time skiing, however the only routes open are the intermediate to hard routes, so I wasn’t really interested in doing that.

We went inside the lodge and returned our skis and boots. And then, we inquired about the public bath. Yes, the discount tickets that we bought included a ticket for a public bath. Up to this point, I’ve never used an onsen (hot springs) or ofuro (bath) in Japan based on the fact that I don’t really enjoy baths, and the fact that I would be completely naked amidst a bunch of people I didn’t know. Despite the fact that my day wasn’t going all that well up to this point, I figured that, what the hell, I was here and I could do it for free, I might as well try it once, and if I hated it I’d never do it again. Well, going in I put all my bags inside of a locker and then I searched around for a towel. Well, they failed to tell me that there are NO towels. So after standing around waiting to see what other people did, I went back to the front desk and asked where the towels were. I explained (in Japanese) that this was my first time going to an ofuro and I wasn’t sure what to do. I was told that there were “nai” (none) towels. So I kinda stood there and said “….ok”. At this point I’m on the verge of just walking right out and not coming back, but then the desk attendant comes in, and I guess since she took pity on the stupid gaijin, she gave me a towel. I thanked her and then reluctantly decided that I’d just…..get naked! Once I kinda passed that hurdle it really wasn’t too bad. Everyone else there, kids and adults, were just normal people. I didn’t really know what to do so I just kinda followed everyone else’s lead. Sat down on a little stool and took a ‘shower’ before getting into the bath part of it. I hadn’t used my towel at this point and I didn’t know what to do with it, so I sat it on my head. Well…that was fine until it fell off my head and into the water. L Sat around in the bath part for a couple of minutes then decided that I’d had my fill, so I took another shower and then tried to dry off as well as I could with a completely soaked towel. Hid in the bathroom to get dressed again before escaping the ofuro. All in all it wasn’t horrible or even terribly embarrassing, and if I had been better prepared (had my own towel and brought a change of clothes) it would have been a lot more enjoyable. I don’t know if I’ll go back to an ofuro or an onsen, but I wouldn’t be opposed to it like I was before.

We had about a 15 minute wait before our bus came to take us back to Sapporo. Once on the bus we both just kinda dozed during the 2-hour trip back. We were starved when we got back to the station so we stopped at a restaurant in the underground area for some donburi and cheap udon. Took the subway back to our hotel room, where we were met with a note stuck in the door. Apparently the hotel staff had investigated and found out that only I had paid for the hotel room. So now Tim will have to pay about 20,000yen for his 3 nights here. It sucks but I was feeling pretty guilty about telling the hotel staff that I had a 2-bed room reserved. Oh well. We plan on getting up tomorrow morning around 8 for more good breakfast and giant ice sculptures!! This is guaranteed to be fun, and is the main reason that I came to Sapporo in the first place. I’m really looking forward to it.

Day 3 (Sunday February 5, 2006)

Waking up around 8am (the alarm went off at 7:45 but it was painful attempting to get out of bed), we quickly took our showers and went to get our buffet breakfast. The main goal of today was to see everything for the snow festival. Our first stop was Odori Koen (Odori Park), which was the main drag of Sapporo. It was 2 stops by subway from where our hotel was (and for this day we were able to buy a special ‘Eco Kippu’ (Eco ticket) which was only 700yen that could be used on the subways, buses, and streetcars for the whole day), and once we got there we were right in the midst of all the snow sculptures. The park is set up so that it was about 15 blocks long, and on one end was the Sapporo TV Tower, which marked the ‘start’ of the festival. From there, on each end of the block, there could be a large or medium snow sculpture, ice sculpture, or snow sculpture contest taking place. At points on either side of the ‘route’ there were also many smaller snow sculptures. Leaving the subway station, the first snow sculpture that we saw was for The Chronicles of Narnia. It was one of the ‘large’ snow sculptures and it was probably 3-stories tall and 50 feet across. Because the snow festival didn’t actually start until Monday, and because it had snowed quite a bit the night before, there were still about a half dozen people working on the sculpture, with brooms and hair dryers tied onto long poles. There were also billboard sized advertisements all around the sculpture for the movie, which comes out in Japan on March 4th. The next snow sculpture we saw was called Dream Ai-land Okinawa, and depicted the current JAL (Japan Airlines) spokesperson sitting among a scene of a temple and some Chinese looking dog statues in Okinawa. This was also a large snow sculpture, and the level of detail was amazing, even surpassing the Narnia sculpture. This one was also completely finished. The next thing that we saw was a giant ice sculpture, a replica of the Royal Exhibition Hall in Australia. (2006 is a year of exchange between Japan and Australia, so at the snow festival there were two large sculptures of Australian buildings, as well as many other smaller sculptures.) While walking down along each block of the festival, some of them would have small snow sculptures at the end or along the walkway. Unfortunately most of them weren’t brushed off yet, so it was hard to make out what some of them were. However, there were *2* Totoro’s and one sculpture of Kiccoro and Morizo (the mascots from the World Expo)! Continuing on, we passed the second large sculpture for Australia, the ‘Flinders Street Station’.

The next snow sculpture, taking up an entire block, was a replica of Horyuji temple in Nara. It was still being worked on so the entire block was roped off and there were a ton of Self Defense guys (read: army) wandering around working on it. Continuing on we saw a bunch more of the smaller snow sculptures, that were made out of probably 10’x10’x10’ blocks of snow. Two of them were very nice sculptures of a temple and city/castle gate, and there was even a snow version of The Thinker. The next large snow sculpture was, I think, my favorite one of the entire festival. It was called Happy Taiwan, and was a 3- or 4-story tall scene with a giant Buddha with mountains in the background, and a temple. Very very cool. I almost want to say it rivals the size of the Daibutsu at Todaiji, but I don’t think its quite that big. The detail level on it was amazing, and its incredibly to think that all of the sculptures here have actually been constructed by different regiments of the Self Defense forces. (I wonder though how they kept all the little things on the Buddha’s head attached……) The next block over was the ‘Citizens Square’, where they were having a snow sculpture contest that started the day before the snow festival officially started. Different cities (especially sister cities to Sapporo) and countries (as well as US states like Hawaii….which, I don’t know how well they’d so in a snow sculpture contest, but…) all had about 4 days to turn their 10’x10’x10’ block of snow into a sculpture, and then it would be judged in the end. At the point that we saw them, the teams were just getting starting to carve into them so they didn’t really look like anything quite yet.

Since we had made it to the end of the park, we then turned around and started walking back in the other direction, on the opposite side that we had come. As we did this the snow suddenly started to come down really hard and the wind picked up. We walked through the blizzard-like conditions, passing by a block worth of ice carvings of animals, and finally reached the Sapporo TV Tower. Since the snow sculptures weren’t finished yet, we had planned on coming back later in the day when it was dark to see them lit up, and then probably would return on Monday to see them at the start of the actual festival. At this point it was right around 11am, and because it was Tim’s girlfriends’ birthday back in the states, he had to find an internet café somewhere to call her. So while I waited at a Starbucks across the street for him, I looked for something to do next. When we had visited an information booth the day before in Sapporo station, and were told about the Eco Ticket, we were also told that it would get us ½ off a ticket up the ropeway for Mt. Moiwa, which wasn’t too far from downtown Sapporo. So after Tim finally came to meet me at Starbucks, we headed into the nearest subway station because I had to figure out how to get to the street car from where we were located. With our Eco Ticket we didn’t have to pay any extra to use the streetcar, and once we found the station we were on our way to Mt. Moiwa. Getting off at the nearest stop, we had to walk a little bit through the snow and then up a hill to get to the ropeway, where we then got 550yen off of our tickets thanks to the Eco Ticket (this thing saved us like $15 throughout the day I think). After our little trip in the cable car, we thought we had gotten to the top of the mountain, however waiting for us outside of the station was a Snow Cat! We got to ride in a little sled behind it as we slowly made our way up to the top of the mountain. When we got to the top we had a great view of snowy Sapporo. (In fact the observatory that we were standing on, there was so much snow on it that only about 6” of the railing could be seen coming out of the snow.) It was pretty cold and windy out so we quickly went inside of the ubiquitous gift shop, and without buying anything, returned to the Snow Cat, where this time I decided to ride on the inside back down to the ropeway station. After another cable car ride, we got back to street level and walked back to the streetcar station, where we spent the next few minutes and the subsequent streetcar ride back to the subway station talking to an American family that was visiting Sapporo from a US army/navy/air force/something base near Tokyo. They didn’t speak a word of Japanese (though their 5 year old son was in an all Japanese school), but the Mom knew about Ann Arbor and U of M. J

When we got back to Odori Station, we planned on making our next stop the Sapporo Beer Brewery. I had to ask several people exactly how we could get there, and after a little bit of confusion we finally located the bus stop outside of an exit to a department store connected to the station. 20-minute bus ride later, and we had arrived to the Sapporo Beer Garden. Before arriving I really didn’t have a clue what a “Beer Garden” was exactly……but it turned out to be just a restaurant (I had visions of people sitting around in some outdoor courtyard, drinking bottles of beer while sitting on benches….). Since we hadn’t had lunch and it was now around 2pm, we were starved and went to eat in a restaurant called Genghis Khan. When we walked in they came over to us with plastic bags and instructed us to put our coats and purses in them, after which they hung them from hooks under the table. Also included among the plates and silver wear was a bib……these two things made me a little worried. Basically the restaurant was such that you ordered a plate of raw meat, and you cooked it on the island-of-Hokkaido shaped convex grill placed in front of you. You could also cook veggies, if you so desired. Because I was cheap and didn’t think I’d be all that hungry, I opted for a plate of lamb that was only about 850yen. Well I think I should have gone for the 2000yen all-you-can-eat-in-an-hour plate of lamb because it was some of the most delicious meat I’ve ever had. Unfortunately the Caesar salad that I also ordered turned out to be somewhat disgusting…..an entire raw egg just plopped into my cup of dressing? Eww. When we were finished eating we wandered around the Beer Museum for a bit (which was somewhat humorous in its miniatures portraying how beer is made; they had little snowman-like people pushing around barrels and such…), but skipped the beer tasting (Tim doesn’t drink and I just didn’t care). We then went to go and catch the bus again, which we missed and had to wait 15 minutes for the next one. When we finally left, we made a stop at the ‘Factory’, a mall occupying the old Sapporo Brewery building. They had a floor all of just traditional Hokkaido crafts, which were pretty cool and pretty expensive, and then another section of your run of the mill mall. That got boring pretty quick so we decided to head back down to Odori Park to see the snow sculptures all lit up.

First stop was the Sapporo TV Tower, which was crowded with all the people that wanted to go up and see the entire length of the snow festival, lit up, from several hundred feet up. It was very cool and I took a lot of pictures. (I was also randomly offered a piece of beer flavored taffy from someone, and it tasted like…..beer.) When we got back down to street level we made our way down the 15 blocks of snow sculptures again, taking pictures of everything because now most things have been brushed off and all of the ice sculptures were all lit up, some with different light shows going on. The Narnia snow sculpture was the most impressive, with music (from the film, I’m assuming) and a laser light show going on it at varying times as we passed by it. The only thing not lit up was the sculpture of Horyuji, which was somewhat of a disappointment to me. After we had walked all the way down to the end and came back, we got on the subway and headed to Susukino, where they had another 2 blocks of ice sculptures. Most of them weren’t brushed off, and we couldn’t get close to them because the road hadn’t been blocked off yet (the snow festival still hadn’t started). Some of them were incredibly detailed, like peacocks and a mermaid. There was also a Hina Matsuri (Girl’s Day) ice sculpture (Hina Matsuri is typified by families displaying these very intricate and expensive displays of a male and female doll, dressed in a style from the Heian period). The neatest thing from it all was two buildings with real fish frozen in it. After seeing the rest of the ice sculptures, it had already gotten to be about 9pm and our feets and backs were killing us, so we went the one stop needed on the subway and returned to our hotel room.

Day 4 (Monday February 6, 2006)

Got out of bed at 8am, and after taking a shower, I turned on the TV in hopes of seeing the Super Bowl. I figured that it had to be on TV somewhere, and luckily it was! I turned it on just as some guy with a tattoo on his check started singing the national anthem. I watched with anticipation as they did the coin toss, and the kickoff, and then they went to commercial break…….except they didn’t. They went to a Japanese language commentary instead. L The only reason I watch the Super Bowl is because of the commercials, and it being in Detroit this year, I was looking forward to it. Oh well, guess I’ll just have to download the commercials from the internet instead. After that letdown, we went to get our final free breakfast (it was the same as the previous two mornings, except this time the eggs were cold), and then came back to the room to pack our bags. Every time I go on a trip, even if I don’t buy anything, I’m never able to pack everything back in the way it was when I got there. Going down to the front desk to checkout, Tim had to pay about $200 for his stay, and luckily they were able to hold our bags until we came back to get them.

Leaving the hotel, we took the subway to the end of the line, to Asabu station, where we would catch a bus to Sato-land, another area in Sapporo where events for the snow festival were being held. It was about a 30 minute ride out to the site, and once we got there we walked around and saw a whole area where teams were getting to work on making snow sculptures out of 10’x10’x10’ blocks of snow. There was also a huge snow slide, and a snow labyrinth. The first thing that we did was explore the snow labyrinth. I had hoped that it would be a snow maze, with dead ends and all that, but it turned out to just have a never-ending path where there were no wrong turns. At the end of the path were some steps that allowed you to go to a platform made from snow that was taller than the maze, so you could look down and see everyone inside of it. After leaving that, I wanted to go on the snow slide. It was then that the day became not so fun. There was a sign saying that it was only a 30 minute wait for the slide, so we got in line. As the line slowly starting to move towards the entrance of the line, we were waiting for longer…and longer…….and longer. As we stood in like we were getting colder and colder. Eventually we got close enough and had spent enough time standing in line that we just didn’t want to leave. So about 1.5 hours later we FINALLY got to go on the snow slide, and immediately afterwards we practically ran back to the dining hall to warm up. After that we pretty much were done at the Sato-Land site, so we got back on the bus and headed back to the main Odori Park site where we walked through the snow sculptures one last time, to see them completely finished. Everything that we couldn’t get close to earlier was now open, and on a few of the stages different kinds of performances were going on. (Best moment of the day: we’re walking down the length of the park, and since no matter where I go in Japan I try to wear something with Michigan written on it, I got a ‘Go Blue!’ yell from a passerby. J ) After finally buying some souvenirs, we returned to the hotel and picked up our luggage and then headed off via train and subway back to New Chitose. We got there a bit earlier than when our flights would leave, and since we each had a separate flight back (I was going to Osaka International and Tim was going to Nagoya), so I went to wait inside of the gate. About an hour later and I was back in the air again. Wasn’t really all that exciting of a trip this time because it was spent entirely doing homework. I didn’t get an emergency exit row seat again but the two people who were supposed to be sitting next to me moved before takeoff, so I had an entire row to myself. When I got back to Osaka International (called Itachi) I had to take a 45 minute bus ride to get to Kyoto station, and then 2 trains back to Hikone. Taxi ride later and I was finally back to JCMU!

The one course at Kiroro that I didn’t wipe out on:

The day before the snow festival starts, they are still working on the Narnia sculpture, and a cool advertisement for the real thing:

A building in Austrailia, and ‘Happy Taiwan’:

A snow sculpture for Okinawa, and a very cool mini snow temple:

Does it look cold enough?? And…a snowy Horyuji temple:

Close-ups of parts of Horyuji:

The Thinker, and Morizo and Kiccoro:

Totoro!! (I love the sign…it says ‘YES! Totoro!’) and the kanji for snow, made out of….snow:

Odori Park at night:

Another part of Sapporo, called Susukino, with cool neon signs and fish frozen in ice!:

On top of Mt. Moiwa:

Attractions at another site for the snow festival, called Sato-Land:

A snow slide and snow maze!: