Today is the start of the Sapporo Snow Festival, the famous snow-sculpting event in which a dozen or so teams work to create beautiful masterpieces out of snow. This is the 60th anniversary of the festival, which got its start in 1950 when the city of Sapporo decided to turn several local snow sculpting competitions into a regular event, and everything just sort of snowballed from there (sorry). Different sculptures are created each year, and it’s always fun to see what the will be made — one group is making a giant Miku Hatsune Nendoroid this year, for example. During my days as a single gaijin I did a fair bit of hitchhiking around Japan, and I visited the city of Sapporo but not during the festival. I’d love to go see it properly sometime.
The 60th Sapporo Snow Festival is going on right now. Wish I were there.
