Sapporo, Hokkaido Snow Festival Trip

Friday - Sapporo

We visited Sapporo last year in the summertime, so I didn't think we'd be back. But here we are again, this time for their famous Sapporo Snow Festival! Sapporo is a city in the northernmost island of Japan called Hokkaido. It's so close to Russia that you'll notice some signs in Russian, and the island is home to some of the snowiest areas in the world.

To get to Sapporo from Himeji you have to fly into New Chitose Airport and take either a bus or train to Sapporo City. We spent most of the day traveling to get to the city, and got to Sapporo in the evening. Since our Airbnb was close to Odori Park, where the majority of the the Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival) snow sculptures are, we spent the rest of the day seeing them. The sculptures are up for only one week, and they receive a lot of tourists from around the world during this time.

Saturday - Moerenuma Park & Susukino

The next day we visited Moerenuma Park, which has free admission and is closer to the outskirts of Sapporo. They had snow gear you could rent to sled or ski in certain areas of the park. There was also a 3-kilometer walking course around the perimeter of the park. Being from the desert, it was fun seeing this much snow. We detoured a bit from the path to see some metal sculptures and that area had parts where you were knee-deep in snow! We ended up spending most of our morning there before heading back into the center of the city. 

In the afternoon we caught a bus to the Susukino area, which is Sapporo's main nightlife district. There they had closed a couple of streets to display ice sculptures. Most were intact, but one had fallen apart due to the previous day's weather.

Sunday - Nijo market, Chocolate Factory, Otaru

We returned to Nijo Market, where we'd gone the previous year, this time to have some fresh kaisendon (seafood rice bowl) for breakfast before making our way to the Shiroi Koibito Park and chocolate factory. Quite a different scene from last time, plants were dead or protected and covered up with snow. While we were there it began snowing, such a wonderful sight! 

We then went to Otaru City, which we'd also visited in 2024. The city also has a snow festival, but with a focus on snow lanterns. It had begun the previous day. They light up the snow lanterns with real candles at 5 p.m. It seems like a lot of work to maintain. We got there before 5 p.m. and there were many volunteers,  especially from sister places like Korea and Taiwan, making more lanterns as they melt with the heat from the candles and have to be repaired or replaced. Since we got there early we ran into some English-speaking volunteers that gave you a tour of the Snow Light Path Festival an hour before it starts. We even got to help create our own lanterns at the end of the tour. They also had made a slide area that anyone could use for free to slide down.

We took a break at LeTao, a famous desert shop in Hokkaido, before continuing our walk by the canal. There were so many people walking that some areas had become a bit slippery, but we made it through with no one in our group slipping too badly. We returned to Sapporo after seeing the festival and met up with some other friends who were also in the area. 

We had a yakiniku (grilled meat) dinner, where you have a small grill in the middle of the table and you get roughly bite-sized raw meat to cook in front of you. The place we went to had unlimited meat and veggies for 90 minutes. Everyone was super stuffed by the end, but with teamwork we were able to finish everything that was ordered.  

Being super stuffed with food, we decided to go to to a pirate-themed karaoke place and booked a room for two hours. By the time we got out no more buses or trains were running so we walked back to our place, but with all the food we ate the walk back at 2 a.m. was welcome.

Monday - Tsu Dome

After the long night out, we had a slower start to our morning. We ate breakfast at Cafe de Crie and headed to Tsu Dome (Sapporo Community Dome). This is another area that also has snow sculptures and snow activities, some free and others paid. We tried the snow rafting one with our friends and also made snowballs. 

Inside the dome they had food stalls, where we tried the Wildburger, aptly named as instead of buns it had meat patties and inside it had beef and lettuce. This was our snack before having ramen for dinner and heading back to the Airbnb for some rest.

Tuesday - Return Home?

This day we were supposed to fly back home, so we had a quick bakery breakfast and briefly saw the the real-life Former Hokkaido Government Building that had had a huge snow sculpture recreation in the Yuki Matsuri. It had been snowing throughout the day and when we got to the airport a few flights had been canceled. Ours remain delayed and we were hopeful to still make it out, but as we got closer to our time to leave, it ended up being canceled. By then most flights to Kobe for the next 3 days were fully booked!!!

We had to scramble to figure out what to do for our group of 5 people. One person was able to book a flight to Tokyo the next day before it sold out. The other 4 of us ended up finding a flight to Okayama (one prefecture west of Hyogo, where Himeji is) that left in 2 days. We also booked a last-minute hotel for the nights we needed and rushed to the train to make it out before they stopped running, as the airport was not near anything and we had to make the 40+ minute ride back to the city. It was chaos.

We eventually made it to the hotel by 11 p.m. They had an onsen and after that stressful, exhausting day I went before they closed at midnight, deciding I might as well make the best of the situation. For being 11 p.m., the onsen was surprisingly busy! 

Wednesday - Maruyama Park and Hokkaido Jingu

Since we now had an extra day to explore, we went to Maruyama Park. The morning was a bit warmer, if you walked underneath the trees you could feel the water droplets coming down on you from the snow melting. We saw Hokkaido Jingu (Hokkaido Shrine) at Maruyama Park, and one side of the roof had a snow avalanche come on down because of the warmer weather, luckily the area below was blocked off so no was underneath. We spent most of the day at Maruyama Park, and in the evening I returned to the onsen and used the massage chair they had.

Thursday - Home Sweet Home!!

Finally, we hoped the weather would be good enough to take off this time. It was snowing in the morning so we were nervous. The hotel has a bus stop nearby that took you to the airport, it was helpful because it meant we didn't have to drag our luggage through the train station. Our flight was delayed a few minutes,  but not by much, and we finally made it out of Hokkaido! In Okayama, we had to take a bus to Okayama Station, and we thought we had missed it since our flight was delayed but the bus left late so we were just able to catch it! After a day of travel, we were finally back in Himeji around 8 p.m.