Sapporo Snow Festival – Odori Park

The Sapporo Snow Festival (さっぽろ雪まつり Sapporo Yuki-matsuri^?) is a festival held annually in Sapporo, Japan, over seven days in February. This year, the festival dates from 5th to 11th of February.

Odori Park, stretching east to west over 1.5km through the heart of downtown Sapporo, is one of the primary festival sites. It contains several large snow sculptures, hundreds of small sculptures made by organizations and citizens of Sapporo, a skating rink, a snowboard jumping platform, and a sliding area for children.

One of the main attractions of this year’s festival is the Invasion of Shingeki no Kyojin into Sapporo or Attack on Titan, adopted from internationally renowned Japanese manga series of the same name. There is an illuminated sound and light show projected on the sculptures at night.

The Taiwanese government contributed the following sculpture. On the left is ice sculpture of ‘The Queen’s Head’ in Yehliu Geopark in northern Taiwan. The Queen’s Head is one of the hoodoo rock formations that literally looks like the head of queen. On the right, there is an ice sculpture of the ‘Pingxi Police Box’ in Pingxi District in New Taipei City. The ice sculptures are illuminated in the evening and concerts are held on the stage.

The following large snow sculpture is entitled ‘The Ruins of St. Paul’s Macau’. The church was built between 1602 and 1640, but destroyed by a fire in 1835. This unique five-story Baroque style facade with Oriental flavor measures 23 meters in length by 25.5 meters high. The word, ‘Mater Dei’ (meaning ‘Our Lady’) is inscribed in the lowest story and the bronze statues of four saints of The Society of Jesus; Saint Francis Borgia, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Francis Xavier, and Saint Luigi Gonzaga (from left to right) are standing in the upper story. On the story above, you find the carvings of The Blessed Virgin Mary, a seven-headed hydra, a sail boat, an epigram described in Chinese characters, and Chinese style lion-like creatures (originally made as faucets). On the story above, there is a carving of Jesus Christ and the instruments of torture supposed to be used at the time of the suffering of Christ. In the center of the gable on the top story, there is a carving of a dove which symbolizes the Holy Spirit outstretching wings beneath the symbol of Christianity, the Holy Cross standing at the very top. What makes this facade very unique among the Catholic churches around the world is its distinctive combination of the East and the West in architectural design.

A large snow sculpture of an international popular Japanese anime television series, ‘Dragon Ball Super’ is appearing at the UHB Family Land in Odori to celebrate the 30th anniversary in TV broadcasting.