Sapporo Yuki Matsuri

the infamous Sapporo Yuki Matsuri, a photo by asihsimanis on Flickr.

Its world famous. It is huge. It has amazing sculptures. Attracts probably thousands of people from within Japan and from outside of Japan to come each year, but well that's it.

I remember thinking when I received my scholarship to Japan, that while I am there for a year I have to go to Hokkaidos infamous Snow Festival, I have heard from it for so much and I have built this perfect scene in my head on how it must be. So when the opportunity came to go, I wasn't going to say no to it.

We went using a ship, and there were 12 of us, the ship ride was 18 hours from Niigata, and we would only be in Hokkaido for one night, so we were probably spending 50% of the whole trip on the ship, but it was the cheapest way to go, I could never have been able to afford it if we didn't take the ship.

My Sensei was worried sick of me when I told him I was taking the ship to Hokkaido, because he is from Hokkaido and he said to me that the waves are particularly bigger in Winter, and we were going in the peak of winter. So yeah, I was scared. I prepared a lot of traditional Indonesian Medicine called Tolak Angin, which is supposed to keep your body warm and therefor will help you not get sea sick. So I drank that thing and I did not get sick, a lot of my friends did however, the waves were huge!

Hokkaido was not as cold as we all have expected, probably because everyone kept saying it was so freaking cold, so we had this really big expectation for it, but it wasn't really, we could survive.

The Sapporo Yuki Matsuri was however not as pretty as I have expected, it was really big and beautiful and everything , but I just didn't get the goosebumps when I was there.

Sapporo however had succeded in becoming my second most liked city in Japan after Tokyo, it just has that really nice vibe to it. I really like that northern hospitality everyone keeps talking about.

Should you go to Sapporo Yuki Matsuri, maybe no, because I don't think it was worth it, but there are other festivals in Hokkaido which I think are just so much prettier than this one, I will show them to you later.