Sapporo Snow Festival
The Sapporo Snow Festival is Japan's largest winter event, held annually for about a week in early February and drawing well over a million visitors to Hokkaido's capital. It began in 1950, when local high school students built six snow statues in Odori Park; today the same park carries a run of enormous snow sculptures along roughly 1.5 kilometres of its length, including buildings, monuments and characters rebuilt at a scale that needs Self-Defense Force engineers and thousands of truckloads of snow hauled in from outside the city. A second site in the Susukino entertainment district shows clear ice sculptures, many with fish and flowers frozen inside them, and recent editions have added a family site with snow slides. Everything is lit after dark and the sculptures look completely different by day and by night. Admission to the sculpture sites is free. Hotel rooms in Sapporo sell out months ahead, and pavements turn to packed ice, so grip soles are essential.
Event information
| When | Usually held in early February; check the official site for the latest schedule |
|---|---|
| Where | Sapporo |
| Access | The main Odori site runs along Odori Park above the subway line of the same name, with Odori and Nishi-juitchome stations at either end; the Susukino ice sculpture site is one subway stop south. |
| Schedule status | Check the official site |
| Official information | Open the official site |
Practical tips
- Book accommodation six to twelve months out; February is also university entrance-exam and ski season in Hokkaido, and central Sapporo rooms go early and expensive.
- Walk the Odori site twice, once in daylight for the carving detail and once after dark for the projection lighting - they are effectively two different events.
- Buy or bring boot grips: the compacted snow on Odori and in Susukino turns to polished ice under crowd traffic.
- The Otaru Snow Light Path usually overlaps these dates and is about forty minutes away by train, which makes an easy second evening.
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