Japan Photo Guide

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Satoland Sapporo is one of the 3 sites for the Sapporo Snow Festival, with Odori Park and Susukino being the other two. Satoland is a little far from the city, but can easily be accessed during the snow festival by free shuttle buses that run from the other sites. While most of the impressive sculptures are at the Odori Park site, Satoland has such things as an ice labyrinth (maze), huge ice slide, ice rafting (a raft gets pulled by a snow mobile) and even hot air balloon rides weather permitting.

For more information and a few photos, see the official Satoland Site.

Thanks to Greg Logan for the photos!

A district of Sapporo, Susukino is Japan’s largest entertainment district north of Tokyo and is home to hundreds of restaurants, clubs, bars and other nightlife establishments. During the Sapporo Snow Festival, Susukino gets involved and has it’s own road of ice sculptures on display.

These ice sculptures (are maybe I should say ice advertisements because that is pretty much what they are) are cool but the best part or the little ice bars that open up at night. In 2007, there was a Baily’s, Hennessey and even a Song Park Karaoke place where you could sing a song and you get a score depending on how accurate you were and then depending on your score you would get a coupon for a real establishment of Song Park.

Check out the video of a few of the ice bars here and a few more photos after the jump. See more photos and read the rest of this entry »

The 2008 Sapporo Snow Festival will be held in Sapporo (of course) from February 5th until the 11th. Basically the Sapporo Snow Festival is a showcase of huge and amazing snow and ice sculptures. I have been to many festivals in Japan and can honestly say that most of them do not live up to their hype, but the Sapporo Snow Festival is one of the few that does…if you can bare the cold weather!

I actually went a few days before it started and left on the second day because it was a lot cheaper to do it that way. I suggest doing it this way not only because it is cheaper, but also because most of the big ones are (almost) done anyway and you can also see how they are made.

See more photos and read the rest of this entry »