The Sapporo Snow festival, which our Cold Steel Tour is visiting in February, sounds cool enough — snow mazes, festival food, sculptures stories high — but you’ve got to see pictures to realize how incredible it really is.

This is a video a Japanese tourist took of last year’s festival. Watch for the catbus and Totoro at around 2:50. Later on they pass through the festival grounds and you get to see some of the matsuri food stalls. There’s a sign for “yakimono” kebabs and another for amazake (“sweet sake”), which is actually non-alcoholic and an AMAZING anti-winter drink in my opinion — though a lot of Westerners don’t like it. It’s a sweet rice beverage with bits of glutinous rice floating in it, served hot. I have great memories of coming in out of the snow in Tokyo, sitting down as close to the kerosene heater as physically possible and sipping some of that wonderful stuff.

Later yet in the video is a peek at one of the seafood stalls – you’ve got your live sea anemone, live king crab, and of course crates and crates of the more dead variety. I think there may be a law that says any trip along the Sea of Japan must involve more crab than any person ought to healthily eat. Then yet more sculptures — the ice peacock at 4:40 is particularly cool. I could barely make snowballs as a kid, so I can’t imagine how they get the snow to stay like that. A few look like they’ve been melting a bit, but we won’t have to worry about that — we’re arriving on the opening day of the festival, so everything will be brand new! Skip ahead to 8 minutes to start seeing the really BIG ones — Shark and Disney castle, then the imperial castle at 9:30. Also, Death Note fans — 9:55 shows a familiar face and his signature snack, followed by a three-story mansion and Japanese castle. I hope this gives a hint of how incredible the festival will be.

And if you like what you see, apply now for our 2008 Cold Steel Tour of Tokyo and the Sapporo Snow Festival!

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