Sapporo Snow Festival

We had a pretty big weekend. I took off Friday and Monday from work and we had a 4 day weekend up in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

The Sapporo Snow Festival has been on my bucket list for years, but I never really thought I’d get the chance to go. It’s a pretty big event and people come from all over the world to see it. We got an Airbnb with two other American families from Honda to keep it relatively cheap.

The other families have a 2.5yr old girl and a 1.5yr old boy and everyone is super great with our kids.

We decided to drive to the airport, which is about 2 hours away, instead of taking the Shinkansen this time. Overall I think it was about an hour shorter and a little cheaper to drive. As you may have heard, right now the Corona virus from China is a big deal. So as you can see in our pics, we were wearing masks through the airport and on the bus. Caroline does good with keeping her mask on because she sees kids at school wearing them all the time. But Nathan did not want to keep his on.

Of course the Corona virus is very unfortunate, but it was not such a bad thing for us. Due to the virus, all the tour groups from China were shut down. This significantly cut down on the crowds at the festival. We didn’t have to wait more than 5 minutes for anything the whole time. Kids rides, sledding hills, or food. That is pretty unheard of in Japan. It was kinda nice.

Here is a picture of our Airbnb. It had 4 bedrooms, of which we only used 3. It was super nice and accommodated everything we needed.

We got to the house around 6:30pm maybe on Friday. It was within walking distance of a grocery store and a ramen restaurant. Hokkaido is known for their fresh seafood and their dairy products. There is a lot of land up there so they have a lot of cows and farms. One of their famous dishes is called Hotate Butter Ramen (ほたてバターラメン). So we ordered that with some beer. We had too many people for one table, so the husbands, being so awesome, took the kids to a separate table and let the women have some girl time.

About 2 weeks before we went, the weather forecast was no snow for the festival. They were actually shipping snow from other parts of the country to try and make all their sculptures and sledding hills. We figured, oh well, we’ll still go and see what we can, then maybe come back next year for some snow. But the day before we arrived they got 1.5 FEET of snow. Then during our first night there it snowed another FOOT! So we went to bed with a healthy amount of snow, then woke up to almost double that. It was more than we’d ever seen at one time I think. The next morning we got up, made French toast, and headed out to one site of the snow festival. Of course we had to eat some fresh Hokkaido snow on the way.

The first site was called “tsudomu”. There are three main sites across the city and this was a more kid oriented one. There are sledding hills, snowball throwing targets, snow mazes, and there is an indoor baseball stadium where they set up food and bouncy houses. I can imagine this place would have been packed and the lines would have been so long if not for the Corona virus in China. But it was like having the whole snow festival to ourselves.

We stayed there until 4pm because we had a 5pm dinner reservation at the Sapporo Bier Garten. One of the famous beers in Japan (and you can even buy it in America) is called Sapporo. So we made a reservation to have dinner at the restaurant, which is attached to the factory. It was about $40 per adult (and only $5 per kid) and it was all you can eat and drink for 2 hours. You cooked your own meat on a griddle-like thing at the table. And there was an iPad where you just kept ordering more meat and beer.

While the ladies went to the gift shop afterwards, the guys took the kids outside and we played in the snow. It was a really pretty area. Then we walked back to the train station so we could get back and put some tired kids to bed. It was a busy day.

The next day was Sunday. We had French toast again. We hung around the house until about 11am because we found a park buried in snow and decided to take the kids to play there.

Then we took the subway to the main site of the snow festival. It is called Odori. This is where all the famous snow sculptures are. The first thing we did was go up the Sapporo TV Tower to get a good view of the city and mountains. Again, the line was only about 5 minutes. Crazy.

We went back down to find that the other kids were frozen to the bone. So they decided to go home early. The Brewers stuck around until dark to see the snow sculptures lit up and see some random Japanese pop bands. Nathan fell asleep in my arms so I had to carry around a sack of potatoes for an hour. But he missed out on the Strawberry treats and also the Yubari melon milk. Hokkaido is famous for Yubari Melons also. Its just a cantaloup. But they can cost around $200! The Yubari Melon Milk was only a couple bucks, but still delicious to a cantaloup fan such as myself.

But it turned out that we were so glad we stuck around because it started snowing super hard. It was so amazing and pretty and magical. It was just great to be at such a famous snow festival in a pretty snow squall with not that many people crowding us.

We made our way back to the house and put the kids to bed. The guys decided to take a taxi to pick up some food from a restaurant called Magic Spice. Yet another thing Hokkaido is apparently famous for is Soup Curry. Magic Spice was a restaurant recommended to us by a Japanese guy at work who is from Hokkaido. It was delicious, but really spicy. We also bought some special Sapporo branded beer that apparently you can’t buy outside of Hokkaido. One was called Sapporo Classic and the other was called Namashibori (I think? 生搾り is the kanji)

We got up at 5:30am Monday morning for our 10am flight back home. It snowed a little more again so we trudged through that in the early morning with our suitcases. It was just so quiet and soft, dragging the heavy suitcases wasn’t even annoying.

We made it to our plane on time and said goodbye to Hokkaido. It was an amazing trip. The large amount of snow, the small amount of people, the awesome Airbnb, the delicious food, and the super well behaved kids just made for an amazing time.